


Yet To Come

by erelis



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2018-08-14 06:43:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 184,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8002366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erelis/pseuds/erelis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felix has made a lot of mistakes in his life. ( And he's only sorry for precisely three of them. ) But one seemingly innocuous instant is going to change his life forever. If he doesn't fuck it all up first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> One day, I happened quite by accident upon a piece of fanart while listening to a particular song on my ipod. Thematically, neither song nor artwork has anything to do with this story. But when I looked at it, this is what came to me. And to be honest, I'll take any excuse under the sun to write about Felix and Locus.

" _Get down!_ " Locus' shout lashed across the comms channel like a whip, harsh and bitingly sharp.

Felix reacted immediately, pitching himself down onto the uneven ground so hard his teeth rattled. His armor protected him from feeling any heat off of it, but he could still hear the crackle of the particle beam as it passed over where he’d been standing only a moment before. With a quiet curse, he rolled to the side, already pushing himself back up and onto his feet. A bullet pinged off his shoulder guard and he lunged to the side, firing back at the asshole who'd just shot at him. His aim was true. The guy dropped without taking another shot.

A warning indicator blinked on his HUD, reminding him that he was going to need to reload the magnum soon. The ground in front of him cracked, a divot appearing in the parched earth in a tiny puff of dust. It was just an ordinary projectile that had struck it, but it was much too close for comfort. Eventually, one of these bastards was going to get a lucky shot. Or the soldier ham-fistedly wielding the binary rifle was going to get his shit together and figure out how to aim the thing. Felix needed cover and he needed it _now_.

There was a rocky outcropping a short distance—when he focused on it, his helmet sensors mapped the distance at twelve meters—away. Unless there was another one of these cowardly fucks hiding behind it, he could duck around it, reload both of his guns, and get back into the fight in a few seconds’ time.

"Move," Locus snapped over the comms. "Now."

Long association with his partner allowed Felix to translate that bit of unsolicited advice without a second thought: _I'll cover you_. Not for the first time, he wished he had one of those active camouflage generators. It would have been damn helpful in a situation as colossally stupid as this one was turning out to be. 

It was supposed to have been a simple reconnaissance trip.

The Freelancers and their little band of rainbow morons had declared war on their operation. Hargrove was pissed at them. The two factions of Chorusans had joined together into one large, highly idiotic army that was bound to cause them no end of problems with completing the mission. All of these complications had combined into one big clusterfuck that left them needing to rethink their strategy, now that civil war-assisted genocide was no longer on the table.

One of their guys—Felix thought he remembered his name being Gibson—had told them about some abandoned bunker a scout had discovered seventy-five klicks from their current location. He’d said there were munitions there, apparently amassed by Chorusans of one side or the other during the years of in-fighting and subsequently forgotten. Ignoring the find wasn’t an option. Their own supplies weren’t heavily depleted, but neither Locus nor Felix were about to look the free weapons gift horse in the mouth. Their stockpile could always be increased and just leaving the weapons out there for the enemy to stumble upon and retrieve simply wasn’t going to happen.

Instead of sending a group of pirates to collect whatever was in there, Locus decided that he was going to go himself. He wanted to see the condition of the weapons firsthand and take an inventory to better determine what their next steps would be after acquisition. Felix opted to go with him because he didn’t have anything better to do and didn’t relish the prospect of hanging around the base and terrorizing the troops another day. The shine on that little hobby had worn off pretty fast, hurried along by the pirates’ desensitization to both his antics and his threats.

But of course, nothing about the Chorus mission had gone according to plan once the Freelancers had shown up and this relatively minor endeavor was no exception. They probably should have seen it coming. Maybe they would have if their enemy had been someone competent and skilled, but after all the time they’d spent among the Federal army and the rebels, they both knew how useless and pathetic the soldiers were. They weren’t a _real_ threat. Expecting any of them to pose one was as preposterous as it was counterintuitive.

Which is why, after they’d landed their Pelican a klick away from their destination and disembarked, they walked right into the middle of what looked to be a small platoon of enemy soldiers. They were crawling around the bunker like a swarm of ants, already in the process of moving crates of weapons and ammunition out to beat-up old jeeps and Warthogs. Letting them get away with all of that ordnance was out of the question and a paltry thirty Chorus-trained soldiers were nothing compared to two mercenaries of Locus and Felix’s calibre. Between Locus’ camouflage and Felix’s speed and sharpshooting, slaughtering the lot of them wasn’t going to be a problem.

And it hadn’t been, either. They had killed about a third of the soldiers in short succession when some idiot carting out a crate of grenades had tripped and dropped it. The grenades, evidently improperly stored, had apparently jostled together too much in the fall, because the whole thing exploded in a massive bloom of fire and shrapnel. It killed the soldier who’d been carrying it, his buddy in the Warthog nearby, and another guy heading back into the bunker. But it was there that the good fortune had ended. The blast had occurred too close to the place Felix had been hiding, stunning him and knocking him out into the open and in plain view of the soldiers who’d come running to see what all the commotion was about. They’d put two and two together, reached seven and the erroneous conclusion that Felix was responsible for the explosion, and had sounded the alarm.

Felix had been quickly surrounded while an argument broke out over whether they ought to just kill him there or take him prison. Locus, still invisible, had sniped two of them before they caught on that he was there too. And Locus, a near mythical figure of terror among both camps of Chorusans, was enough to push them all into a disorganized panic.

Things had gotten pretty chaotic after that.

A few more soldiers fell to Felix’s rifle before it registered empty and he had to switch to his handgun. Another handful was put down by Locus, who had to keep moving lest his position be tracked back along the trajectory of his shots. Then some asshole found the binary rifle and Felix ran out of bullets.

At Locus’ signal, Felix ducked to the side and ran. The crack of a rifle round had him throwing up his hardlight shield to protect his back, but because his arm was twisted at an awkward angle and he couldn’t waste time looking over his shoulder, he couldn’t be certain that it was enough. Another shot was fired—this one he recognized as coming from Locus’ rifle and let the shield disappear. Locus rarely missed. He knew without having to seek confirmation that he hadn’t this time either.

“How many are left?” Felix asked, once he was safely behind the rock and busy reloading.

“Nine,” came the almost instantaneous response. “No, wait. Ten. There’s—”

“Yeah,” Felix said dryly, dropping the rifle and flinging up the shield between himself and the red glow of a targeting laser. “I see him.”

The soldier was close enough that when he discharged the rifle, the force of the particle blast slamming into the shield shoved Felix back against the rock. The shield was strong, he wasn’t worried that it would break, but now he was worse off than he’d been a moment ago. Pinned into a corner like this, it would be really fucking easy for someone to pick him off from the side.

“You got him?” Felix called across the comms, a faint hint of exasperation seeping into his tone.

“Kind of busy,” Locus snapped back brusquely.

“I’m going to be busy getting incinerated if you don’t hurry the fuck up,” Felix shot back, fingers of his free hand tapping against the magnum at his thigh.

He’d holstered it to reload the rifle first. Right now, with its magazine empty, it was little more than a heavy metal rock, but thrown hard enough, he could probably disable the guy long enough to lower the shield and grab the rifle. He might even been able to get him with a knife. Unfortunately, he only had the one on him and he wasn’t convinced he wanted to risk wasting it on what might turn out to be a wild throw. Not yet, anyway.

“Just— _Damn it_.”

That sounded bad. Not just the aggravated emphasis Locus put on the words, but also because he felt so strongly about whatever he was seeing that he was moved to curse about it. Locus had as foul a mouth as Felix, and adding in all the Spanish, he could get quite creative with his swearing, but he used it much more sparingly than Felix did. Usually, he could gauge the extent of Locus’ particular emotion about any given thing simply by taking notice of the words he used. At the moment, he wasn’t _upset_ , but he obviously wasn’t pleased either.

“What is it?” Felix demanded, knowing he wasn’t going to like the answer but would probably benefit from the knowledge whether he wanted to hear it or not.

“They’re converging on your position,” Locus reported. There was a shortness to his voice that suggested that he was moving fast. “One of them has another rifle.”

Felix didn’t have to ask why that was a problem. Where these assholes were getting working binary rifles, he didn’t know, but he personally wanted to shoot every last person who touched one of them. _Fucking Chorus_ , he thought angrily, scanning the area in front of him. Red indicators were popping up on his tracker—six of them—headed his way. _Where the fuck is Locus?_

A hail of bullets crashed against the shield. Felix scowled ineffectively at the HUD, as if he could will Locus into moving faster. _Hurry the fuck up! Where are you coming from? The goddamn moon?_ It crossed his mind to give voice to those thoughts, but Locus had a frustrating habit of becoming ornery and uncooperative when he was irritated. He didn’t think he’d let him get killed by the Chorus soldiers, but he wouldn’t put it past him to let him get shot up a little. And quite frankly, Felix was tired of getting shot for this stupid mission.

“Any day now,” he grumbled under his breath, unable to keep silent completely. “Seriously. Jesus Christ.”

Another round of bullets smashed into the shield. And another. Movement flickered at the corner of his vision and Felix shifted, ducking in tighter against the inside of the shield and spinning it sideways to deflect those rounds as well.

“Felix!”

At Locus’ shout, made louder because he was close enough now to hear him not just over the comms but in person as well, Felix looked up. High above him on the top of the rock, there was... There was nothing there. Not that he could see, anyway. But he knew that Locus was up there. That knowledge was confirmed a moment later when something small and black was pitched down to him. He caught it easily as the soldiers around him targeted the top of the rock and sprayed it with bullets. Felix wasn’t concerned. He knew that as soon as Locus had spoken, he’d been moving away in search of concealment. 

Glancing down, he eyed the thing he’d been tossed. A teleportation grenade. _Seriously?_

“You could’ve just shot them!” Felix snapped irritably.

“Just get out of there. I have a grenade.”

It made sense. Picking them off one by one would open up the possibility of Locus getting shot. Tossing a grenade and blowing them all to hell would be easier and less dangerous. It was still sloppy, though. And Felix hated the teleportation grenades. Theoretically, they were great. Realistically, they made him horribly sick to his stomach and he didn’t feel like spending the rest of the firefight nauseous.

“Fine,” he spat out irritably. “If I puke in my helmet, you’re cleaning it up.”

“Quit complaining and get moving.”

Sighing heavily—maybe even a touch theatrically, though he would never admit it—Felix thumbed coordinates about twenty meters away from his current location into the interface. He glanced through the translucent light of the shield, idly noting the positions of the enemy soldiers, then took a deep breath and pressed the button to activate it.

The grenade lit up a bright orange, flaring to blinding brightness as two beams of rifle shot slammed into his shield. A hissing crackle filled his ears before quickly dissolving into a roar of white-noise. Someone started shouting. He couldn’t make out the words, but it occurred to Felix in a dim, distant kind of way that it might be him doing it, what with the way his throat suddenly started to ache. There was a wrenching twist, almost as if the ground had just been yanked out from under his feet, and his stomach seemed to contract into a knot of agony. The roar became deafening. Between that and the brilliance of the light, it felt like his head was going to explode.

Just as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. The sound disappeared. The queasy sense of movement stilled. The brightness winked out. And Felix passed the fuck out. 

* * *

It was the beeping that woke him. It was low and insistent, like the old alarm clock he'd had as a kid that wouldn't stop making noise no matter how many times he would hit the snooze button. And just as fucking annoying, too.

There was a muzzy thickness to his thoughts as he tried to pull himself together enough to get his eyes open and figure out what the hell was going, like they were traveling through molasses from a million meters away to get to him. His eyelids felt like they weighed a ton, almost enough to convince him to forget about the monumental task of getting them open, and his mouth was dry and cottony. His tongue felt like sandpaper as he tried to coax moisture back into it by licking his lips. As cautiously as if he was combating a vicious hangover—and maybe he was, he couldn’t fucking remember what had happened last night—Felix pried one eyelid open, prepared to squint away the lancing pain of unwelcome sunlight.

There was no sunlight streaming in through an uncovered window. There wasn’t anything but a lot of darkness and a tiny, disembodied red dot blinking at him in the periphery of his vision. _What?_ It took more effort than he liked, but he coaxed his second eye into following the first. It was a process; he had to blink the already open one a few times to work the haziness out of it, but eventually he had both eyes open, clear, and focused. It was exhausting and by the time he was done, he just wanted to go back to sleep again.

He nearly did it, too. His body was aching in a strange, almost feverish way, and his mind was still a bleary, chaotic jumble of indistinct images and sounds that didn’t make any sense. But there was a niggling sense of _wrong_ that wouldn’t let him drift back off into peaceful oblivion. Like he was forgetting something important and he needed to remember it _right the fuck now_. But try though he might, and he did try because he really wanted to go back to sleep, he couldn’t do it.

Something was wrong. That something was getting wronger by the second, the longer he laid there doing nothing about it. And the slowly sharpening sense of doom and dread was already driving him crazy.

_All right. Okay. You’re not a fucking idiot. You can figure this out_ , he told himself irritably. _One thing at a time. Get up and figure out where you are._ Felix took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then slowly exhaled. It didn’t do anything to erase the odd anxiety or return to normal his slightly increased heartbeat, but it did make it feel like it had expelled some of the sticky cobwebs in his lungs and loosened up the tightness in his chest.

The red light was still there, steadily winking at him. It reminded him of an idiot’s attempt at Morse code; it didn’t stop and there was no pattern to it that suggested that it had a message for him. The beeping hadn’t stopped either, though he was getting used to it enough by now that his brain was starting to ignore it.

_First things first_ , he decided, revising his plan of attack now that he’d focused back in on the noise _. Shut off that fucking beeping._ Planting one hand on the ground—and he was lying on the ground, he realized as it offered absolutely no give whatsoever, or something just as hard as it—Felix started to push himself up into a sitting position. At the same time, he lifted a hand to rub at his face.

The click of titanium against nanolaminate accompanied the abrupt halt of his hand, cluing Felix’s disoriented brain into the fact that he was wearing a helmet. _His_ helmet. What _the fuck?_ Drawing his hand back from his face, he blinked a few times. Now he could see it. The little red light wasn’t coming from somewhere else. It was one of the warning indicators on his HUD. And the beeping wasn’t an alarm clock or malfunctioning machinery. It was the sound that accompanied the light.

_What the hell is wrong with me?_ Because now it was painfully obvious that something was. An assortment of aches and pains weren’t terribly unusual in Felix’s line of work. Neither was the occasional hung-over wake-up in who-the-fuck-knew-where. But this mental dullness was new and alarming. It made him wonder if he’d been drugged and that in turn led to thoughts of imprisonment and torture.

_Seriously_ , he told himself furiously. _Wake the fuck up and stop screwing around. Figure out where you are and what’s going on. Now._

His head swam uneasily as he got himself sitting up in a mostly vertical position. There was a headache throbbing behind his eyes, though it wasn’t as bad as it could have been and it didn’t spike with his movement. His stomach offered a weak gurgle, but the queasiness passed almost as soon as it rippled through him. Now that he knew he was wearing his armor—as he’d discovered sorting himself out enough to sit up, he was wearing _all_ of it—he ran a bioscan for injuries or foreign substances in his blood. The results came back negative and largely unhelpful: an elevated heart rate, a decrease in body temperature of two degrees, minor muscle stress, and rebound dilation of the blood vessels in his head.

Overall, it was good news. He wasn’t dying and he hadn’t been poisoned with anything for which he was currently lacking an antidote. But it didn’t shed any light on his predicament either.

_Light._ Silently cursing himself for being an idiot, Felix switched his visor’s display over to night vision. The impenetrable darkness in front of him was suddenly flooded with greenish light, but what he saw spread out before him was so unexpected that for a moment, he simply sat there, more confused now than ever.

“What the hell?” He didn’t mean to say anything out loud, but it slipped out of his mouth without his permission. It wasn’t particularly loud, more a murmur than anything else, but it still made him grimace slightly. His voice was low and scratchy, like he hadn’t used it for a long time and it needed time to warm up before it started sounding normal again. How long had he been asleep? _Unconscious_ , his sluggish mind returned, the realization causing his skin to prickle with unease. _I was unconscious_.

Slowly, Felix got to his feet. One of his knees made a soft popping sound and the effort to stretch out his back made him groan as his muscles initially refused to budge, but eventually he was upright and impatiently waiting out the brief wash of dizziness to subside. Thankfully, the queasiness didn’t return and the muted throb in his head didn’t sharpen into unpleasant agony. He waited for a minute or two, working the kinks out of his body and letting his equilibrium adjust, but finally the need to move overruled caution and he took a step forward. And another, when his knees held and the dizziness didn’t return. And another. By the fourth step, he was walking normally, albeit with care to do it quietly, through the stacks of boxes.

It was a storeroom. At least, that was what it looked like. A large one, wide enough for about ten people to walk abreast and long enough that the far end was melting from the eerie green of the night vision back into black. The ceiling was a good three or four meters above him. There were shelves lining the walls, stretching from floor to ceiling, made of thick industrial steel and piled high with boxes. There were crates stacked on the floor, making little aisles between the shelves. Moving over to one, Felix tapped a finger against it. The resultant click told him it was metal. He leaned closer, examining the sides.

There were symbols written on it, though what they meant was unknown to him. They were vaguely familiar, however, and the tickle of recognition at the back of his mind kept him standing there staring at them long after he would have otherwise continued with his exploration. They weren’t military or medical, but the longer he studied them, the more convinced he was that he’d seen them somewhere. Or at least, he’d seen something similar. They were triangular, a scattering of large and small triangles arranged in some kind of pattern, and they invoked a strange alert wariness in him.

The feeling got so strong that he straightened up and glanced around the room, but there was nothing there. He wasn’t being watched. His motion trackers weren’t picking up movement. But motion sensors could be fooled. He’d seen that happen often enough in the war. A whole group of soldiers could be cut down in seconds by a camouflaged Sangheili warrior with an energy sword before they ever knew one was in their midst. Felix had a few seconds to wonder why that particular memory had surfaced from his addled brain before it hit him.

Covenant. Those symbols were Covenant. And they were all over everything.

He moved down the aisle, glancing at the stacks of crates on either side. Covenant writing was scrawled across more than half of them. A few times he encountered groups of crates with other symbols—sharp lines and curving half-circles—but those he didn’t recognize at all. At the end of the aisle, he turned and walked down the one next to the shelves. More Covenant writing. More of that unfamiliar script.

It was a Covenant storeroom, he realized. Which meant, what? That he’d woken up on a Covenant ship? Or worse, on a Covenant planet?

“This isn’t possible,” he muttered under his breath, shaking his head in denial of what his eyes were telling him. “This just isn’t possible.”

Although his recollection of the events leading up to this insanity was still obscured, Felix was _absolutely certain_ that he hadn’t been involved with the Covenant. The war had been over for years, and in an effort not to dredge up memories best left buried, he made an effort not to get tangled up with anything relating to them now. Once or twice he and Locus had taken jobs to kill a Sangheili or a particularly prominent Kig-Yar, but they’d never worked with them and they certainly never worked _for_ them. Not even Locus would—

_Locus. Where the fuck is Locus?_ Felix automatically checked his HUD, already knowing that the familiar blue marker wasn’t anywhere to be seen but incapable of not searching for it anyway. Locus should have been there. Whatever happened, it didn’t make any sense for Locus _not_ to be there. And what was worse, it had taken him fucking forever to even think about Locus at all.

"Okay, no." Felix came to a stop mid-step next to a particularly large metal crate. "Figure this shit out."

There wasn't anyone in visual or motion sensor range to hear him. As long as he kept an eye on his motion trackers, he could speak out loud without worrying about being overheard. Maybe it was careless, but Felix had always thought and planned better out loud and pacing around then silent and still.

All right. What did he know?

"I woke up in this room. No injuries or drugs in my system." He started ticking off the points on his fingers. "Probably not a prisoner."

He wasn't restrained. He hadn't been stripped of his armor. It would be royally fucking stupid to take a man prisoner and throw him into a room where he'd be free to move around and let him remain wearing his ability-enhancing armor. Extending his left arm, he activated his hardlight shield. It appeared with a burst of blue light that flared incandescent across the night vision and made him wince in pain. _Stupid_ , he chastised himself, deactivating it and waiting until he was sure the visor's display had faded back to normal before chancing opening his eyes.

A quick pat down of his magnetic holsters showed that he didn't have any guns, but his combat knife was still where he always stowed it. A knife, a fancy high-tech shield, and a suit of armor with—he did a quick diagnostic—fully functional shielding. Either he'd been captured by Covenant forces too new to taking human prisoners to realize how to do it properly or... Here he floundered. Or what? He certainly hadn't just waltzed in here on his own.

"All right, last night I was—" His nose wrinkled, something about that striking him as inaccurate. " _Yesterday_ I was... Fighting, obviously. I wouldn't be wearing armor if I wasn't fighting."

Fighting felt right and it made sense. He was going with that assumption until something better presented itself or his memory straightened itself the fuck out. He'd been fighting. Covenant? He'd been fighting Covenant and—No. It wasn't Covenant. It couldn't be Covenant.

A dim, murky memory flickered across his mind, there and gone too fast to grab it. "Goddamn it," he hissed, frustrated. "It wasn't Covenant. C'mon. You know what happened to you." It didn't help to knock his knuckles against the side of his helmet but he did it anyway, wishing he could jump his brain back to functionality the same way he could a car.

"It was a fight. I lost my guns. No damage to the armor so it wasn't a _bad_ fight." That didn't explain the memory loss. "Maybe it was a bad fight but my opponents were incompetent?"

Visceral disgust rose within him at the question. Yeah. Yeah, whoever he'd been fighting had been stupid. But they'd done something to him, obviously. Not a head wound. Gassed him? No, there would have been traces of it in the bioscan. It was something else. It had to be.

Another memory surfaced, though Felix immediately identified this one as useless. A moment later, however, he reached for it again, struck by a kind of tip-of-the-tongue itch in his brain. A reddish-orange sky, periodically lit up with the glow of plasma fire. A hot wind blowing up the rise, bringing with it the sharp scent of smoke. Two nervous, twitchy soldiers crouched a few meters away trying to distract themselves from the oppressive weight of futility and impending doom by trading stories of their first assignment after Basic. Anecdotes about getting lost after arrival in the hangar bay of the ship they’d been assigned to and the disorientation following their first Slipspace jump in cryosleep.

_Cryosleep._ Had he been in cryo? Felix spun around, searching the room, but he hadn't missed any cryochambers propped innocuously against the wall. And he wasn't experiencing freezer burn either. No, that wasn't it. Not cryo. He'd been nauseous and sore, more like he'd fallen through a Slipspace portal than anything else.

And just like that, like the sun finally burning off a thick layer of fog obscuring a valley floor, Felix remembered.

He remembered fucking Chorus and the goddamn Freelancers fucking everything up. He remembered listening to Gibson's shitty advice and heading out to that bunker with Locus, not outfitted for a battle but finding one anyway. He remembered getting tossed the teleportation grenade and one-handedly imputing the coordinates. And he remembered everything going sideways, the Slipspace field distorting and shifting and yanking him more violently than he was accustomed to away from the scene.

_He_ did this to himself. That realization crashed over him like a tidal wave, sending a chill down the length of his body. He'd put the coordinates in wrong, messed up a number or three and sent himself to the Covenant side of the galaxy.

_Holy shit._

In terms of fuck-ups, this had to be one of his larger ones. But, he hastened to reassure himself, as bad as it was, it wasn't unfixable. All he had to do was reset the coordinates for the proper location and head back. Locus would probably be pissed at him for disappearing in the middle of the battle, but Felix sincerely doubted that he'd have that much trouble killing off the rest of the Chorusan soldiers by himself. No, he'd go back, tell him what happened, endure the lecture about why sloppiness—even though it really hadn't been his fault this time—on the battlefield was to be avoided, pack up the shit, and head back to base. Simple.

Except that he couldn't find the damn grenade. It wasn't on his belt or shoved into one of his utility pouches. When he went back to where he'd woken up it wasn't anywhere to be seen. It wasn't under any of the nearby shelves either and it hadn't rolled down the aisle. Becoming increasingly panicked, Felix scoured the floor from one end of the room to the other. It wasn't there.

"Fuck," he hissed, as his search came full circle and he ended up standing where he'd been laying. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Where the fuck is it? It can't be gone. It _brought_ me here. I can't have dropped it in Slipspace."

But it wasn't there. No amount of cursing or assertions about how it couldn't have just vanished made it turn up. And after a second search of the storeroom, Felix found himself faced with the horrible truth.

He'd jumped into Covenant-held territory and there was no way to jump back. The only weapon he had was a knife and a shield. He was, without a doubt, absolutely fucked.

It was _so_ tempting to turn to the nearest crate and take his frustration and anger—not fear; Felix refused to admit to himself that he was afraid—out on it. But even as his hand curled into a fist, he knew he couldn't chance making that much noise. Someone would hear. The room wasn't big enough to be some warehouse positioned on the outskirts of whatever Covenant hellhole he'd sent himself to. It was a room in a building. For all he knew, it was a pantry in some Sangheili military academy and he'd be murdered by a group of overenthusiastic recruits. Or maybe they'd eat him. He didn't fucking know.

The war might have been over, but he was under no illusions about what that meant for a lone human trapped alone in the stronghold of a former enemy. A former enemy who might be part of the faction that wasn’t quite so _former_ at all.

No, someone would hear and any hope of escaping would be lost. He had to play this smart. He had to sneak out of this place, somehow get to a Covenant ship, figure out how to pilot it, and fly the hell back to human space as fast as the fucking thing would go.

“You’ll laugh about this later,” he told himself, trying to find a bright side to the whole sorry mess. It didn’t sound very convincing and after a beat, he added with dry disgust, “If you don’t get yourself killed.”

Leaning back against a crate, Felix brought his hand up to his head and drummed his fingers against the top of his helmet. He had no idea what to do. Despite what had often been said of him over the years by anyone who even remotely knew him, he _could_ plan ahead. He often did. But spontaneity usually worked better for him, when all the elements were already in play and he didn’t have to try to foresee what they _might_ be at some random point in the future, and right now, he wasn’t positive that that wouldn’t get him killed. Darting through the door in the center of the room and pelting down whatever corridor had to lie beyond it with no guns blazing seemed like suicide, and he did _not_ want to die in Covenant space.

The bastards hadn’t killed him during the war. He’d be damned if they were going to succeed now.

After five minutes spent wracking his brain for a solution, he was no closer to working out a plan that was even remotely feasible than he’d been when he still hadn’t the first clue what was going on. He’d been staring blankly ahead for so long that his eyes were dry and scratchy. He blinked, bringing them into focus and with them, the crate sitting there across from him. The strange symbols he’d seen on his search up and down the aisles were repeated there. In fact, the same collection of symbols, with some tiny bit of variation, was written on all of the crates.

Crates upon crates of the same thing piled up in one place. Felix glanced up and down the length of the room for a moment, considering the implications of that.

“Ah, fuck it,” he decided, after a few seconds spent eyeing the room. _It can’t hurt to take a peek, can it? Maybe it’ll tell me where I am._

Pushing off of the crate he’d been leaning against, Felix turned and felt along its lid. The universe must have mustered up a scrap of sympathy for him, because before long he located a latch. An actual _latch._ No overly complicated holographic locking mechanism. No keypad for inputting codes. No DNA lock or whatever weird shit an alien would come up with for keeping its shit safe. Just an ordinary latch, sized a little larger for alien hands than what he’d find on a similar piece of equipment designed for humans.

Knowing it was probably going to be something utterly useless--or in the case of food, utterly disgusting and inedible for him--Felix flipped the lid open.

"Fuck me," he murmured in disbelieving appreciation.

Lying nestled securely in some kind of impact-absorbing packing foam were rifles. A _lot_ of rifles. These particular ones he recognized—carbines that shot concentrated radioactive projectiles. During the war, he'd been on the end of rifles like this often enough, usually wielded by Kig-Yar marksmen. He reached out and trailed his armored fingers over the sleek barrel of the nearest rifle, half expecting it to be a hallucination, then stepped to the side and pried open the next crate, covered with the strange symbols he didn't recognize.

Inside were what appeared to be pieces of weaponry. Not fully assembled guns, but pieces of a slick black material that looked vaguely gun-shaped. When he reached in to pick one of them up and examine it more closely, a number of pieces lit up and slid together to form a huge, wicked-looking firearm that was more shoulder cannon than rifle.

"Holy shit," Felix breathed, withdrawing the thing and turning it over in his hands. It wasn't Covenant make and it sure as hell wasn't human. This was something else. Wholly alien, like the binary rifles. When he set it back down, the weapon fragmented into its component parts.

It was like that down a whole row of crates. Covenant firearms, grenades, and the pieces of a number of heavier artillery mixed in with the alien weaponry that assembled itself when he touched it. This place wasn't just a storeroom: it was a weapons locker full of enough firepower to go to war. And Felix, with a dawning sense of relieved glee, realized that maybe he wasn't doomed to die on Covie-held territory after all.

There were a number of magnetic holsters on his armor and quite a few utility pouches. He was going to load them all down. An alien rifle went on his back. A plasma pistol was slapped to his thigh. Four grenades went on his belt and as much ammunition as would fit went into the pouches.

_Covenant bastards aren't gonna know what hit them_ , he thought in satisfaction, his earlier hopeless panic replaced by a budding sense of certainty that he could do this. Somehow, he could get back to Chorus. He'd survived a whole fucking planet getting glassed. He could survive this. He glanced between two open crates, waffling between taking two pistols—one for each hand—or a rifle. _Maybe I should_ —

With the brilliance of an exploding star, the overhead lighting came on. Yelping in a mixture of surprise and pain, Felix shut his eyes and hunched forward to shield the visor, switching from night vision to regular too late to prevent himself from being blinded. Automatically, he grabbed for weapons, settling his internal debate when each hand found a pistol.

Something had turned the lights on and it wasn't him. And it wasn't like he was going to be able to hide, not with a bunch of crates sitting open and his armor like a big orange and grey sore thumb sticking out for all to see. But he'd be damned if he let himself get taken prisoner, or shot or clobbered or whatever, when he had enough firepower on hand to take out a fleet of Phantoms.

"Drop it!" commanded a sharp, no-nonsense voice as he spun around, fully intending to start shooting wildly to buy himself some time to get behind cover and let his eyes adjust. " _Now._ "

It was human and male, but otherwise unrecognizable. Felix's finger itched to pull the trigger, but instead of reacting blind, he cracked open an eye, wanting to survey just how deep into the shit he was. When unbearable agony didn't immediately stab into his brain, he opened the other, ignoring the way both eyes watered a little. His vision wasn't too blurry to shoot, that was all that mattered.

But it wasn't a squad of heavily armed humans or aliens or an uneasy alliance of both arrayed in the doorway, focused and ready to shoot him. It was one guy pointing a gun at him. _One_ guy. He was wearing what looked like some kind of stealth suit; a deep, dark greyish-blue shade that would blend into shadows, constructed of what looked like a light-weight titanium-flex mesh armor and which Felix guessed probably provided temperature regulation to shield against thermal imaging. That guess was proven accurate when he briefly switched his visor to thermals and saw nothing. There was a pair of thin silvery glasses obscuring the man's eyes that Felix wasn't fooled for a second into thinking were sunglasses. That was some kind of fancy visor, like the shit the ONI spooks had, made for surveillance and data analysis. It was a sophisticated piece of tech, and so was the suit, which made the knit hat covering the guy's head seem even more oddly out of place. 

Felix was still tempted to shoot first and ask questions never, but if this guy was on some kind of reconnaissance mission into alien space, there was every chance that it meant he had a ship. And if Felix could get to it, he could get the hell out of this mess without having to struggle through figuring out Covenant flight controls. He just had to get the guy on his side and keep him alive long enough to find the ship. Once that was accomplished, he could kill him and be on his way.

Without actually dropping the pistols, Felix opened his fingers in a show of willingness to comply and lowered both hands to his sides. It was as disarmed as he was going to be in hostile territory and in unknown circumstances.

"Hey—" He barely got the beginning of the word out his mouth before the guy cut him off.

"Where did you get that armor?" he barked, gun still pointed directly at Felix's chest.

Maybe it would have gone better for him if he'd been cooperative and told the guy what he wanted to know. But Felix didn't follow orders very well in general and certainly not from people who had no authority over him. One gun didn't give the asshole any authority at all. _If_ he decided to shoot him, Felix's armor would protect him, and he was fast enough that the guy would only get the one shot before he retaliated and killed him. Because he would kill him if he attacked, ship or no ship. Felix was clever. He could find the thing on his own. He didn't need to put up with some trigger-happy, authority-obsessed asshole to do it.

Despite asking a question, Asshole didn't give him the opportunity to answer. " _Answer me_ ," he ordered, and maybe Felix was way off-base in his assessment of someone he'd never met before, but it sounded like there was actual fury backing that demand.

There was a second of silence. Felix didn't know if that was his cue to respond or if the guy was just taking a breath to keep barking orders, but it was an opportunity and he took it.

"Look, asshole," he snapped back. "I'm on your side here. I'm human, not fucking Covenant." The helmet's communications array was sharp enough to pick up the soft, almost inaudible intake of air as Asshole breathed in sharply. Felix ignored it, unwilling to give him back the floor before he'd said what he wanted to say. "So maybe a little less posturing and a lot more getting the hell out of here before the aliens catch us, yeah? You can grill me later."

The tight, forbidding scowl of the other man had loosened during Felix's tirade and was now slack and slightly open-mouthed. "What?" Not a demand this time, just a whisper of confused bewilderment.

Felix heaved an aggravated sigh. _Gotta be ONI_ , he thought in disgust. _So far up their own asses they think the rest of the universe is too stupid to figure out simple shit_. He jabbed one of the pistols toward a crate. "I can read. Surprising, I know. Now can we fucking _go_?"

Whatever was going on in the agent's mind was no longer visible on his face. His mouth had tightened up into another scowl and the visor concealed his eyes. There was a rigidness to his posture that suggested he was braced for an attack, like he still thought Felix was sporting mandibles under his helmet.

"Jesus fucking—" Breaking off, Felix slammed a pistol down on top of the nearest crate and yanked off his helmet. "Human. All right? Dude, seriously, dial back the paranoia a little."

It should have been reassuring. Maybe not Felix's attitude, but seeing a human face ought to have further reinforced what the shape of the armor should have been telling the guy. It didn't. In fact, the guy reacted by jerking the gun upward and pointing it at Felix's face.

"Who the fuck are you?" It was so low and so icy that it almost made Felix shiver. _Almost_. Because like hell he was going to be intimidated by this prick.

There wasn’t much of the guy’s skin visible, what with the stealth suit and all that shit on his head, but everything from thin-lipped mouth to the tip of his narrow chin was clear in the harsh brightness of the overhead lighting. And maybe it was the lighting that made his skin seem so washed out and pale, or maybe the blood really had drained from his face while Felix was watching. It was difficult to say for certain. He hadn’t been studying him all that closely before. It was only now that he was acting like a lunatic that he warranted the extra scrutiny.

“Are we really having this conversation right now?” Felix jerked his chin in the direction of the door, unfazed by the gun. “You don’t want to, I don’t know, leave first? Get to a secure location? Make sure nothing’s going to try to kill us before we start trading biographies?” He shook his head, clicking his tongue in disgust. “Jesus, are you new?”

Asshole was not impressed by his show of unconcern. “I will shoot—”

The threat went unfinished as a shrill beeping cut him off, emanating from somewhere around the guy’s midsection. It was an alarm of some kind, that much Felix knew by virtue of not being a fucking idiot, but he still lifted his eyebrows in an expression of obliviousness and nodded toward the agent’s stomach. “Time for lunch?”

Lowering the gun, Asshole made an impatient gesture toward the door. “Get moving. Now.”

Rolling his eyes, perversely refusing to hurry now that his new buddy had decided to be sensible and prioritize living over potentially dying, Felix put his helmet back on like he had all the time in the world. Asshole huffed in aggravation, and in answer, Felix casually picked up the pistol he’d set down.

“Are you done?” Asshole asked irritably, a trace of sarcasm working its way into the clipped syllables. “Or would you like to blow up?”

He shrugged as he moved toward the door. “I don’t know. Might be more exciting than being stuck with you.”

When he’d been inside the room, Felix had been expecting to step out into corridors of strange curves and oddly iridescent purple walls. But it wasn’t a Covenant ship. Or if it was, it wasn’t like any he’d ever been aboard. It was a wide hall, the floor made of what appeared to be wholly mundane concrete and the ceiling held in place by metal beams. It looked human. More specifically, like the shittily constructed buildings in the roughest of the Outer Colonies.

He shot a glance back at Asshole, who couldn’t see his expression because of the helmet and probably wouldn’t have cared even if he could. The guy merely gestured toward the metal door at the end of the hall. “Run.”

It didn’t take a genius or a veteran of this kind of work to understand what was going on here. ONI had sent an agent to whatever the fuck this was to do whatever the fuck spooks did and in the course of fulfilling his mission, he was blowing up the evidence. Felix liked obstinance as much as the next guy, but he liked living even better. He ran.

Asshole was right beside him, somehow keeping up with the extra boost of speed the armor provided, and together they crashed through the door. It spilled them out onto loose gravel that crunched under Felix’s boots. They were outside and from the inky impenetrability of the sky above them, it was really late. Only stars were visible, the constellations unfamiliar to his eyes.

“The tree line,” Asshole was directing him to a dark band of scraggly looking shadows almost seventy meters from where they were standing. “There’s a Pelican.”

It was some kind of empty lot in the middle of nowhere. At least, that was what it appeared to be to Felix. Behind him, when he glanced briefly backward, was a huge dilapidated structure that looked to be an old abandoned warehouse. In the faint gleam of the starlight, he could see the edges of broken windows and peeling, crumbling siding hanging down at odd angles. There were dark, hulking shapes in the distance that looked like hills and a dirt and gravel single-vehicle road leading away from the building and disappearing into more of the sad-looking trees.

_Abandoned_ , this place emphatically stated to the world. _Unimportant._ And it just so happened to house a large arsenal of alien weaponry.

_Right,_ thought Felix wryly, as he turned toward his murky destination and pelted away from the warehouse. _Nothing to see here_.

Another round of beeping interrupted the crunching thud of their footfalls before they reached the tree line. It was fast, urgent and annoying. Felix didn’t have to ask his companion what it meant. But Asshole helpfully provided that bit of unnecessary intel on his own. 

“We aren’t going to make it.” He didn’t sound overly concerned, his tone—irritatingly not out of breath _at all_ —level and calm, like he was reading the weather report and suggesting that maybe today wouldn’t be the best day to hit the beach.

Not to be outdone in the bland indifference department, Felix _tsk_ ed in mock disapproval. “Should’ve left when I said so. You’ve only got yourself to blame, pal.”

The beeping turned into a seamless shrill wail. Underneath it, Felix heard Asshole mutter, “Shit.”

Felix sighed heavily. He hated being a hero. It always gave people such unrealistic expectations. And as entertaining as it could be to shatter them, he was getting a little tired of the whining denial that tended to follow.

Reaching sideways, he caught Asshole’s arm in his right hand, dug his heels into the loose dirt, and pivoted back to face the building, hauling Asshole behind him as he throw up his left arm and activated the shield.

“Stay behind me,” he commanded. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary to say so. The situation was pretty straightforward: in an impending explosion, it was better to put oneself behind the relative safety of indestructible hardlight and a dude in almost indestructible armor. But for an ONI agent, the guy wasn’t proving to be a brain trust. Using small, simple words was likely to be a requirement for getting his point across.

Whatever explosives Asshole had set chose to go off right then, preventing further discussion about the best way to survive a horrible explosion. Because it was _massive_. Whether it was the number of the charges that had been set, their individual size, or the weapons within the warehouse, the fireball that engulfed the building looked less like a detonation and more like a volcano had just erupted beneath them. Flames shot high into the sky, the concussive blast battering against Felix’s shield and pushing both him and his unwanted companion backward about half a meter from where they stood. His HUD lit up with temperature warnings, but encased in the armor, Felix felt none of it. If Asshole was in pain or injured or making any sound, Felix couldn’t hear it over the roar of the explosion and was too busy steadying the shield to risk looking backward and jeopardizing his balance. 

It didn’t matter either way. There wasn’t anything Felix could do about it. Just like they wouldn’t be able to linger at the scene much longer. Regardless of how far out in the middle of nowhere they were, there had to be _someone_ in the vicinity close enough to hear the noise or notice the sky light up in ways it ordinarily wouldn’t. The authorities would be called. Or possibly the targets Asshole was meant to be inconveniencing. And Felix was confident that he didn’t want to be there when the place was swarming with people.

The flames receded, taking with them the crushing heat, and once his sensors registered the all-clear, Felix lowered the shield and looked back at Asshole. He didn’t say anything, knowing that after that kind of noise the guy wouldn’t be able to hear him anyway. He just tapped him on the arm to get his attention. Asshole raised his head, shook it a little, and nodded.

_Tough son of a bitch_ , Felix thought with a traitorous thread of appreciation. Deactivating the shield, he turned fully, caught the guy by the elbow, and pulled him along toward the trees. After a few hesitating steps, Asshole shook him off and walked on his own. Pretty steady, too, all things considered. Felix’s professional appreciation grudgingly increased another notch.

Some of the foliage at the edge of the stand of vegetation was charred and a few bushes were sullenly burning, but they shoved past all of it and hiked through a tangle of deadfall and uneven, rocky ground for what seemed to Felix’s internal clock to be forever. It wasn’t. It was probably only a minute and a half. But the longer they hung around there, the greater his sense of urgency became. They needed to get the fuck out of there. Now.

Fortunately, the Pelican wasn’t far. And it hadn’t been disturbed by wildlife, the explosion, or interfering locals. Asshole pressed the release at the bay door, and once it opened, they both clambered aboard. Felix automatically moved to shut the door, well accustomed to Pelican controls. Asshole, surprisingly enough, let him and headed forward to the cockpit. In no time at all, he had it fired up and in the air.

Exhaling a breath of relief, Felix sat down on one of the seats and removed his helmet. The air was a little stuffy, not quite stale, but he breathed deeply of it anyway. Stage one of Get Back To Chorus had been completed. He was out of the room, he was away from the Covenant, and he was on a ship heading away from wherever he’d been. All he had to do was commandeer it, jettison Asshole’s body, and he’d be home free.

“Where the fuck are we, anyway?” he called out, deciding there was no time like the present to get his preliminary reconnaissance out of the way. Too late, he remembered that Asshole probably couldn’t hear him and started to get up to go check the navigational display himself.

“Gilgamesh,” came the response.

Felix sat back down with a heavy thud. “ _Gilgamesh?_ ” he repeated, voice rising precariously close to a squawk in surprise. “But that’s—” He frowned. That was nominally UEG-controlled space. Outer Colony, sure, but the Covenant had no authority over it. “I thought this was Covenant space.”

“What?” Asshole asked. A moment later, he appeared and leaned in the doorway between the cockpit and the troop bay. “Why?”

The ugly knit hat and the visor were both gone, giving Felix a full view of his face and mildly perplexed expression. The guy had short brown hair, almost military regulation, and wary blue eyes. He had a thin face, though not as thin or narrow as Felix’s, a sharp nose, and a pale complexion, currently dusted with a lingering shade of red along his cheeks from the heat of the explosion. He was, quite simply, the most unremarkable looking man Felix had ever seen. _Probably makes him perfect to be a spook. Even if he sucks at some of the basics,_ he thought uncharitably. _Like thinking and deduction._

Felix lifted his eyebrows, trying to coax the man into using his brain. He got a blank stare for his trouble. “Because all that shit in there was Covenant,” he finally said, waving a hand toward the bay door and what might have been the former warehouse now far behind them.

Asshole’s expression didn’t change. “Alvaro’s an arms dealer.” He said it slowly, a little flatly, like it was common fucking sense and it was Felix who was being a slow-witted moron for daring to even question any of this.

That got him an equally blank stare and a blink. “Who?”

It was not his imagination when Asshole sighed, managing to make the exhale sound both disappointed and disapproving. “Santos Alvaro.”

Adding another name onto the first one didn’t clear it up. If anything, it only served to make Felix more frustrated. He leaned forward, propping himself up on his knee with an elbow. “I don’t know who that is.”

“Runs a black market operation out here in the Outer Colonies,” Asshole told him grudgingly. “Sells alien weaponry to the highest bidder.”

Now it all made sense. It was considerably less interesting than Felix thought it was going to be, but at least that meant it was going to be easier to get away. The more complicated this guy’s mission, the more likely it was that something was going to fuck everything up. “So, what?” he asked, not entirely needing to feign curiosity. “ONI’s trying to shut it down?”

He got the blank stare again. “What?”

And here they were, back at square one. Tweedle-Dum was really getting on his last nerve. _Should’ve left the idiot to die_ , Felix realized abruptly, recognizing that the fuck-ups were already happening. Not intentionally. He’d never actually wanted to keep the guy alive beyond the moment he was useful, but old habits refused to die and running through a warzone with a partner he had to protect was the oldest one of all.

Felix gave him the flattest, most unimpressed stare he could. “Seriously?” Then he blinked. “Wait, hold up.” He lifted a hand in a halting gesture. “Are you supposed to be undercover?”

With that, he started laughing. Oh, but it was too rich. ONI sent a newbie agent to handle a gunrunner. A _badass_ newbie agent, sure, but his poker face was shit and his ability to maintain his cover was nonexistent. Asshole was watching him, mouth twisted into a frown, but Felix kept laughing anyway. After the events of the day, he deserved a little hilarity.

“Who are you really?”

It wasn’t a question he was expecting. Though honestly, he wasn’t expecting much. Locus would have told him to shut up and focus on the mission. And that was so unimaginative and tired that it set the bar for reprimands pretty low. If anything, he would have thought Asshole would have gotten tired of dealing with him and returned to the cockpit.

Which was where Felix needed him to be. Preoccupied and busy, attention focused elsewhere, so that he could meander innocently over and kill him. Of course, he didn’t need to sneak it. However well he might have withstood the explosion, the guy was a pushover. Felix could kill him right now with a knife. He just wasn’t feeling like expending the effort. It had been a long, tiring day. He wanted to take it easy.

“As opposed to what?” he retorted sarcastically. “Pretend?”  

His only response was a steady, unblinking stare. He met it, refused to blink, and then found himself mired in a staring contest that, given Asshole’s empty-headedness, would probably last forever.

“Felix,” he finally said, giving in with ill-grace. “My name is Felix.”

“No.”

The sharpness of the single syllable brought his gaze, already wandering away, back to the guy. “What?”

A sliver of something like iron slid into Asshole’s voice. “Tell me the truth.”

Felix just scowled at him. Really? He was going to try the intimidation tactic again? “I did.”

“No,” Asshole replied immediately, his voice as full of conviction as the narrow-eyed glare he was giving him. “You didn’t. Your _real_ name.”

That was a _little_ too perceptive for Felix’s comfort. Originally, he’d chosen the moniker because it was a normal sounding name. It _could_ have been the one he was born with. There was nothing retarded— _looking at you, Freelancer assholes_ —about it. He also just liked it and would have rather had it as a name than his actual one, but that was largely beside the point. The _point_ was that this chucklefuck should’ve had no true idea that it wasn’t his real name, especially since Felix hadn’t hesitated or waffled over it the way people who gave fake names generally did. He was relaxed, comfortable, there was no damning inflection in his voice. But as confident as he was in his delivery was how confident Asshole looked in his refusal to believe it.

“That is my—” Asshole’s hands had been empty a mere moment ago. Now, there was a pistol in one of them, muzzle pointed directly at his face. Felix frowned, his own eyes narrowing in irritation. “Christ, man. What the fuck is your problem?” 

Implacably, Asshole said calmly, enunciating each word carefully, “I want your real name.”

_And I want an endless stream of money, a big house in some uncontested bit of intergalatic real estate, and for Locus to—_ He cut that pointless thought off with a sneering curl of his lip. “Felix is all you’re getting, asshole. So put the fucking gun away. I’m not part of Santa’s crime ring or whatever.” He made an impatient, dismissive gesture. “Stand down.”

“I’m not doing this,” Asshole muttered under his breath.

_About fucking time_ , Felix thought, shaking his head and glancing away. “Sure, man, whatever—”

There was no sound. No tap of Asshole’s boots against the metal floor of the troop bay. There wasn’t any jingle of some unsecured piece of equipment. There wasn’t anything. Just sudden, excruciating pain blossoming across the side of his face and the receding image of the gun Asshole had just hit him with.

It wasn’t the first time Felix had been pistol-whipped. It wasn’t even the first time it had happened completely without warning. And while it hurt, it wasn’t the worst pain he’d ever felt. He was stunned, _shocked_ , but his body reacted before his brain had a chance to come back online and reengage the situation. The knife was in his hand before the gun had completed the arc away from his face and he was lunging forward even as he was blinking and looking up to get a better view of Asshole standing right beside him, as if the space between the doorway and his seat didn’t exist. Then it was at his throat, pressing warningly into his skin. Not a second too late, either, as the muzzle of the gun was immediately nudging against his bruised temple.

“Put it down,” he hissed at Asshole, putting a little more weight against the knife’s handle.

Asshole had the audacity to look neither fearful of the threat nor unduly discomforted by the blade slowly paring through enough layers of skin to cause the faintest trickle of blood to inch down his throat. “Tell me your name,” he returned, unperturbed.

“I did,” Felix snapped.

The gun dug into his temple, setting off a bright starburst of pain behind his eyes and a nauseating lurch of his stomach. _Fucking bastard_. It wasn’t nearly enough to get him to back down, but that didn’t mean that he was enjoying the rough treatment.

“Look,” he said tightly, scowling murderously at Asshole. “I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that it isn’t, but Felix is my—”

“Felix is dead!”

It was the incongruity of the statement with reality that made him flinch slightly, not the sharpness of Asshole’s voice or the equally murderous way he glared back. “What?” he asked, well and truly confused now.

Once again, Asshole pushed the gun against his head, giving it an obnoxious little twist that required every ounce of Felix’s oft ignored willpower not to retaliate by just slitting his throat and being done with this bullshit. Because it was bullshit. He wasn’t dead.

Ordinary grey-bluish eyes bored into him as though they could pierce his flesh and flay his soul. “I want to know who you really are and where you got that armor.” Faint though it was, Felix could still hear just the tiniest hint of aggravation in Asshole’s voice, informing him in rather clear terms that he was getting fed up with having to ask the same questions over and over. It filled Felix with a petty, vindictive rush of pleased satisfaction. “You’re going to tell me, one way or another.”

Felix snorted. “I think you—”

The movement was too fast for him to follow. One second, he had the knife to Asshole’s throat. The next, Asshole was doing something to his wrist that hurt so fucking badly that he dropped the knife with a yelp. Unarmored, wearing only a pair of flimsy leather gloves, the guy had disarmed _Felix_ , who was still very much wearing his protective armor.

It shouldn’t have been possible. He wasn’t entirely convinced that it had actually happened and he wasn’t hallucinating from the knock to the head. Either way, it was pissing him off. This ONI fuck was pissing him off beyond his ability to endure it. _Forget the easy way_ , he thought viciously. _I’m killing you now._

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Felix snarled furiously, yanking his wrist back and reaching for a gun with the other. “I told you who I am! So I don’t know who you _think_ I am or who the fuck _you_ are—” Fingers closing around the grip of a handgun, he drew it and shoved the muzzle into Asshole’s chest. “—but I’m going—”

The man didn’t flinch away from the gun the way a sane one would. He didn’t pull the trigger on the pistol he still held to Felix’s head the way a combat savvy person would. He didn’t do much of anything. He simply lifted his free hand and passed it over his face, like he was tired or fed up.

And his whole fucking face went with it.

Pale skin, bluish-grey eyes, short-cropped brown hair, thin face: it all disappeared. Deep caramel-colored skin appeared, the kind of shade that made tanning salons a fortune in the superficial pursuit of it, and with it green eyes that Felix would never be able to mistake. Dark hair, the length of which he hadn’t seen for years, replaced the pseudo buzz-cut and the stark lines of scar-tissue across the bridge of the wider nose were as familiar as the far more generous and attractive shape of his real face.

“ _Locus?”_ Felix exclaimed, thoroughly bewildered and not the least bit self-conscious about revealing that fact. He forgot about the gun in his hand and the one pressing against his head. He forgot about the pain and the circumstances that had brought him here. All he could do was stare dumbfounded at his partner, eyes wide and mouth agape. “What the _fuck_ is going on?”

Locus rarely looked pleased with him. Once upon a time, during that almost idyllic period between the end of the war and when it all went to shit, there were moments when Locus was, if not _pleased_ , per se, then at least tolerant of him. Perhaps even mildly amused. They joked together sometimes. A few times—he can remember each one of them with almost crystalline clarity—Felix managed to win true laughter out of him. But those days were long gone, and not simply because they’d been playing at enemies for years during the Chorus op.

It wasn’t displeasure that Felix was seeing in his expression now. There were nuances to that emotion that manifested in a variety of ways and over time he had come to learn them all. This wasn’t anything so mild. This was anger so deep and powerful that it had passed into fury. The kind of fury that he rarely ever witnessed from someone as controlled as Locus prided himself on being. There was something else, too. Something so thoroughly buried beneath the fury that he only caught a glimpse of it in Locus’ eyes before it was gone, too fast and too alien to identify.

“If you hit me with that gun again,” Felix added, seeing in the middle of this bizarre fever dream a flicker of one thing he unquestionably recognized in Locus’ eyes. “I will shoot you. This shit isn’t funny anymore.”

“Felix is dead,” Locus repeated sternly, sounding as if he were reprimanding an errant child for suggesting that something false was true.

He’d said that before, Felix remembered, and it hadn’t made a damn bit of sense then either. But he was a quick thinker if nothing else and it didn’t take him too long to figure out what Locus was talking about it. “You mean the teleportation grenade? For Christ’s sake, it didn’t _kill_ me. It sent to me to Gilgamesh. Apparently. Some kind of fuck-up with the coordinates.”

“What are you talking about?” Locus hissed impatiently.

“The grenade! On Chorus.” The gun pushing against the side of his head was starting to get annoying. Felix batted it away and surprisingly, it stayed away. Locus’ hand dropped to his side without resistance. Seeing that, Felix put his own gun back where it belonged. “At that stupid weapons bunker. You know, it was your damn grenade. You could’ve done something to it. Maybe _you’re_ the reason all of this happened.”

It was only because he was staring at a man he knew practically better than himself from across a very miniscule distance that he saw the flinch for what it was. There wasn’t much to it, just a faint tightening of the muscles around Locus’ eyes, but it happened and Felix saw it. Instead of making him feel smug satisfaction at having rattled Locus—or hell, caught him out, because that was a suspicious fucking reaction to a throwaway insult—his skin prickled and something like an uneasy shiver crept icily down his spine.

Locus stared at him for a few seconds, his fierce countenance softening into confusion-shaded neutrality. “That’s what you think happened?” He didn’t quite sound ready to believe it, but he wasn’t nearly as murderously angry anymore either.

Unease twisted into annoyance, leading him to snap sarcastically, “If you have a better explanation, feel free to spit it out any day now. Or, hey, you know what? Just hit me some more. That’s doing _wonders_ for the situation.”

Locus’ lips thinned slightly, the expression one of obvious exasperation. “Tell me what you remember.”

If he kept this up, Felix was going to start hitting him. “I told you. We went to the bunker to get the weapons. It was crawling with Chorus fucks. We started killing them. It turned into a fight. I got surrounded. You tossed me a teleportation grenade. I activated it. Then I woke up back there.” He punctuated that by jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the Pelican’s bay door and the warehouse. “I looked around a little. Then _you_ burst in dressed like some kind of bad knock-off James Bond. You were an asshole. Like always. We finally left. The building blew up. I saved your life. You didn’t thank me. Like always. We got into a Pelican. Now you’re being an asshole. Again. Shall I keep narrating or are you going to stop being a dick and answer my questions?”

“And you don’t think any of that is strange?”

Felix scowled. “Did you maybe miss the part of my narration that mentioned you being a dick and not answering my questions? Because having questions kind of suggests that yes, I _do_ think it’s really fucking strange. Which is why, and I’m going to repeat this because clearly you’re having some trouble here, I would like you to _answer me_ when I ask you things.”

He was getting that look again. The flat one that said Locus was well on his way to losing his patience because Felix was being an idiot. And if anyone was being an idiot here, it sure as fuck wasn’t him. Feeling his own temper fray too far, Felix snapped, with a sharp gesture toward Locus’ head, “What the fuck happened to your hair?”

It must have been a non sequitur to him, because Locus frowned, even more visibly confused than before. “What?”

“Your hair is really long.” Maybe it was a stupid line of questioning to pursue, but it also seemed like the least maddening. Something was obviously going on here and from the way Locus was harping on his being dead, it wasn’t something pleasant. Trying to understand how Locus went from the short almost-crew cut he’d had the last time Felix had seen him without his helmet on to hair so long that even pulled back it fell beneath his shoulders was probably the safest place to start. “How did you grow it out so fast?”

Locus didn’t answer immediately. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose first, like he was trying to massage a headache away. Felix kept staring at him expectantly through the whole show, eyebrows climbing higher on his forehead as the dithering silence drug on. Finally, after he was starting to think he was going to need to prompt him to speak, Locus lowered his hand and said flatly, “It’s twenty-five sixty-two.”

For an instant, Felix didn’t follow. Frowning, he started to shake his head in incomprehension. And just like that, he figured out what he meant. His eyes widened. “What?”

That wasn’t possible. Locus had to be fucking with him. He’d never been a humorous, joking sort of guy, but that was the only explanation Felix could come up with that made any sense whatsoever. It wasn’t funny. He wasn’t laughing. But what the hell else was he supposed to think?

“Sixty-two,” Locus repeated firmly. “It’s been four years since Chorus.”

“I got sent into the _future_?” Felix squawked, incredulous. “How is that possible?”

Locus didn’t have any answer for him. He shook his head, looking as hopelessly confused as he ever did, which admittedly wasn’t much. But being able to tell that he was confused at all spoke volumes for what he was feeling.

“And that’s why you think I’m dead?” Impossible as it was, at least that bit of the incongruous puzzle was slipping into place. “I’ve been gone for four years?”

“No,” Locus said, voice clipped and expression blank. “You died. I was there. I saw it happen.”

That icy sense of dread was back. Felix leaned back until he was pressing into the seat, eyes narrow as he tried to work that out. “How?”

Face betraying absolutely nothing of what he was thinking, Locus responded as matter-of-factly as if he were giving a mission briefing, “The sim troopers surrounded you. The red one shot you with a sticky detonator. The turquoise one threw a grenade. The blast blew you off the top of the alien temple.”

Dying had always been a possibility in their line of work. If he wanted to look back even further, it had been a possibility since he’d enlisted in the USNC to fight the Covenant. And in those days, death had been a much closer companion than it was after Felix had been assigned to a different squad and met Locus. He’d made peace with that possibility _long_ ago, though once he and Locus had partnered up, the prospect of some asshole getting lucky was drastically diminished. They were good. Better than good. They were the best. Together, they were fucking invincible.

But shit happened. Felix knew that. A lucky shot was, while not ideal, at least conceivable. Being killed by the fucking _sims_ , though? That wasn’t possible.

“ _Tucker_?” Felix replied, voice rising in his disbelief. “ _Tucker_ killed me? Are you fucking shitting me right now? _Tucker_? What the hell happened to you?”

"I was wounded," Locus returned flatly.

"But you got away." It sounded a little too much like a question to Felix's ears, and therefore stupid, since Locus was standing there talking to him. If he hadn't gotten away or suffered some kind of debilitating injury, he wouldn't be there or there would be something visibly wrong with him. But he'd moved all right down in that warehouse and there hadn't been any strange noises when he moved to hint at prosthetic limbs. "Obviously," he added, knowing it was too late to cover up his glancing blow with concern but gamely trying to do it anyway. "Did you kill them?"

Locus' non-expression didn't change. "No."

That wasn't the answer Felix was expecting. He was expecting to hear that Locus had killed them all and finished the mission. Maybe not out of a need for vengeance for killing him, Felix knew Locus didn't care about him enough for that, but because he did care about the mission. That was the _only_ thing Locus cared about these days. He gave him the once-over, reassessing his stance on severe injury, but if the evidence of one existed, it was hidden by the dumb outfit.

A slight frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. "So what happened?"

"Hargrove arrived." What Locus thought of that wasn't apparent on his face or in his voice. It sounded like he was talking about something that had happened to other people, so distant that he didn't have an opinion on it one way or another. "They went to fight him. I left."

There was a finality to those last two words that struck Felix as strange. Locus had just _left_? Felix wouldn't have expected him to stay and fight for Hargrove. The man was an arrogant jackass they both despised a great deal. Unless he'd offered an outrageous sum of money, far more than he had for orchestrating the genocide of an entire planet's population, he couldn't imagine Locus staying on. And maybe not even then. Of the two of them, money for its own sake mattered most to Felix. All Locus ever really cared about was having the funds necessary to ensure that their operation ran smoothly.

But it still rang a little weird. Maybe it was the way Locus was looking at him. Maybe it was his voice. Maybe it was the whole fucking situation messing with his head. Whatever it was, the lingering sense of _wrong_ wouldn't stop skittering through his mind.

"You're serious." It wasn't quite a statement and it wasn't exactly a question. It hovered between the two, not so subtly trying to prompt Locus for further explanation.

Locus either wasn't getting the message or he wasn't feeling inclined to respond to it. "Yes."

“Jesus Christ,” Felix muttered under his breath. Right then, he couldn’t have said whether it was in response to the exasperation he was feeling with Locus, the utter unbelievableness of everything that was happening, or the creeping realization that he wasn’t going to be able to return to the time he’d come from. The grenade was gone and even if it wasn’t, the coordinates he knew were for _places_. Not places _and_ times. He’d just end up sending himself back to whatever was left of Chorus in 2562.

And what about Locus? He’d left him fighting the Chorusan soldiers. Oh, he’d survive, of course he would, but what then? How did Locus in this time remember things that now wouldn’t happen to him in the past? Because if Felix was _here_ , he wasn’t going to be around in whatever alien temple for fucking Tucker to kill him. Whatever Locus did back then, he was going to be doing it alone and that would change things, wouldn’t it? So how was any of that possible?

It felt like he was getting a headache. Or maybe like he was going to be sick. Felix was no physicist. He wasn’t an expert in quantum mechanics or Slipspace theory. He was an ordinary soldier turned extraordinary mercenary who was paid to kill people. Figuring out impossible time-space quandaries wasn’t remotely in his realm of expertise.

_Maybe that’s Locus’ problem_ , he abruptly thought. _I don’t understand this shit. He’s probably just as confused as me._ He’d also had four years to come to terms with his partner being dead. And now here Felix was, living and breathing and acting as though nothing Locus had experienced had happened. Which admittedly for him it hadn’t, but that was probably cold comfort for whatever Locus was going through.

_All right. Worry about it later. There will be plenty of time. Focus on what’s going on now._ As far as pep talks went, it wasn’t the greatest, but Felix was operating with limited mental resources. It was the best he could do.

“So you’re what, on an op now?” he asked Locus, aware that his subject change wasn’t subtle and too preoccupied to care. “Taking down an arms dealer?”

“Yes.”

“On Gilgamesh.” He couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice. It was possible—in the same way it was evidently possible to skip out on one’s upcoming death by jumping forward in time a few years—that the climate of the planet had changed since he’d last been there, but Felix doubted it.

If there was a capital of criminality in the galaxy, it would be Gilgamesh. Located on the farthest fringe of human-held space, the UEG was a completely nonexistent presence and survival of the fittest was all the law anyone needed. Power was largely held by mobsters and Insurrectionists, switching hands frequently as up-and-comers wrested it away from current leadership and were in turn disposed of by allies and enemies alike. On his last visit, Felix had even seen signs of some Sangheili and Kig-Yar syndicates starting to gain footholds in the general business network.

Taking down an arms dealer on Gilgamesh was like trying to change the face of a beach by plucking out a grain of sand. No one was going to notice. Or care. Locus was smarter than that, which meant what? Either he was at ends far looser and frayed than Felix had assumed or he didn’t care where he was getting his money anymore.

“Yes,” came an equally flat response.

“The entire planet is a black market,” Felix couldn’t stop himself from pointing out. He didn’t really _want_ to start another argument with Locus so soon after the last few, but it was just so out of character for him. “What are you going to do, destroy the whole thing?”

That got the faintest twitch of furrowed brows. “No.”

It was like trying to get blood from a stone. Felix sighed, feeling drained by it all. “Four years and you don’t have anything else to say to me except yes and no?”

Locus gave him such a flinty narrow-eyed glare that Felix blinked in surprise. “I have a lot to say to you,” was his icy reply.

That seemed a hell of a lot more vehement and angry than the situation warranted. But Felix was a glutton for punishment; if these were the only choices he had, he would rather Locus berate him for some mistake, minor or otherwise, than get nothing but silence and one word responses from him. Lifting his eyebrows, he prompted, “But...?”

Locus rarely turned down an invitation to rake Felix over the coals about his flaws, but this time, he merely shook his head and didn’t say a damn thing. It was weird. So weird it was edging toward uneasy and the fizz of anxiety jittering through his bloodstream made it a struggle not to get up and start pacing around the bay.

“Ooooh-kay,” he drawled, finding an outlet for his need to move in being loud and obnoxious. “Look—”

“I have to go pilot the ship.” Locus cut him off before he could get any further in his overture of... whatever it had been going to be. Not even Felix was sure. Not an apology, certainly. He never apologized for shit when he didn’t even know what he’d done. He barely apologized for the things he knew he did wrong. But it was going to be something. This kind of tense awkwardness just wasn’t going to work between them.

“Where are we—”

Locus was already turning away from him and heading toward the cockpit. He didn’t wait for Felix to finish. “Stay here and be quiet.”

_That_ sounded like normal. He probably should have taken it without question. But something was _wrong_. More than just the time travel or the stupid mission that didn’t make any sense. There was something off here with them and Felix didn’t like it. He started to get up.

“Locus, seriously, we—”

Spinning around, Locus pointed a finger at Felix’s chest. The swiftness of the motion brought him up short, freezing him in an awkward half-crouch. “Stay. Here,” Locus enunciated firmly, his tone brooking no argument. “And be quiet. We’ll talk later.”

Without another word, he continued on and soon disappeared through the doorway. Felix stared after him a moment, feeling strangely as if the rug had been pulled out from under his feet and he was in the process of falling. The landing, when it came, wasn’t going to be pleasant. There was nothing to do but either go after Locus and badger him about whatever his problem was, which he knew from past experience would not go well and would just leave him more frustrated and at a loss than he already was, or do what he’d been told and sit down. It rankled, but he gave in and sat down with a heavy clanking thud.

Slumping in the seat, Felix let his head fall back against the bulkhead, and with nothing else to do or look at, he closed his eyes. Taking a nap wasn’t an option. There were too many thoughts spinning like little whirlwinds through his mind, kicking up tendrils of fear and confused uncertainty. He hated being afraid. More than silence or being alone, Felix despised fear. It meant he was weak. It meant he was pathetic. It meant he hadn’t come all that far from standing on a dying planet and watching the Covenant glass the city he’d been fighting so damn hard to save.

But he was nearly half a decade out of his element here. He had no control and no means to regain it until Locus stopped being a coy asshole and told him what else was going on. Felix knew that he would eventually, but the wait was going to drive him crazy. Just like the bastard was no doubt counting on.

Still, there was _one_ silver lining to this whole fucking mess. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t much and it didn’t really assuage any of Felix’s concerns or answer his questions. But it soothed his pride. A smile cut across his mouth, sharp and vicious.

At least Tucker couldn’t kill him now.


	2. Two

Given the location and the fact that Locus had a Pelican, Felix expected that the safe house he was using was going to be some dilapidated shack out in the middle of nowhere, off the grid and undetectable unless one of the more enterprising criminals that called Gilgamesh home felt like venturing into the wilds of the planet. It wouldn’t be the worst place they’d ever stayed during a job, but that didn’t mean that Felix was looking forward to roughing it for some indeterminate period of time. As it turned out, however, that assumption couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Locus flew the Pelican into the heart of one of the planet’s larger cities and landed on the roof of what Felix realized—after exiting the craft—was the tallest building there. He spent about six seconds glancing around, unable to believe how sloppy Locus had become in his dotage, before turning to him with a critical half-frown.

“Secrecy isn’t really an important detail to you anymore, is it?” he asked, not bothering to hide the sarcastic disapproval in his voice.

The man had snuck into a kingpin’s weapon storage wearing the kind of high-tech disguise equipment that Felix only dreamed about and now here he was landing his big-ass Pelican on top of a building for all to see it. And people would see it. Gilgamesh wasn’t a military installation. People drove fancy cars and piloted sleek recreational aircraft if they wanted to fly. An ungainly Pelican would stand out like a sore thumb.

“This is the highest point in the city.” They were the first words Locus had spoken to him since telling him to sit down and shut up. “No one will see it.”

He might have had a point there, but they hadn’t teleported onto the roof. “Maybe not, but you know someone saw it fly in.”

“No one saw it,” Locus said staunchly.

Felix opened his mouth to protest, it was highly unrealistic to think that and Locus was smarter than he was acting, but before he could get the words out, Locus held up a tiny device, pressed down on a button, and the whole fucking Pelican disappeared.

“You have a _cloaking device_?” Felix demanded, stunned. “On a fucking Pelican?”

Shrugging, Locus turned away from him and started toward the door near the center of the roof. “I’m prepared.”

Hurrying to catch up, Felix wasn’t about to let it go. Especially since Locus saying actual words to him didn’t appear to be a fluke. “Where did you get this shit? Are they mass-marketing it in the future or what?”

Locus didn’t look at him. “No. I have a contact who gets me what I need.”

There was an uncomfortable pinch in his gut at that. Felix slanted a glance his way, but there was nothing of Locus’ thoughts on what he could see of his profile. Four years was a long time and of course Locus’ life went on, but there was something about it all that didn’t sit right with him. There were these other unidentified people in Locus’ life now. People that maybe he was also doing jobs with and trusting to guard his back. It was like this huge black hole right in the middle of the map Felix had of Locus’ life and he didn’t like it.

It was gnawing on him already and Locus’ dismissive, occasionally hostile attitude toward him wasn’t helping to alleviate the problem. They hadn’t been _real_ friends for years, but they weren’t enemies. Finding him alive again after so much time should have been a positive experience, but Locus was acting like he was angry about it. And that wasn’t right.

They were partners. Why the fuck wasn’t he happy to see his goddamn partner?

Locus had reached the door, opened it, and as the door started to swing closed, Felix could see him already disappearing down the stairs. Scowling openly, he caught the door before it clanged shut, yanked it open, and stomped after him. The stairwell was solidly constructed, made of some kind of composite that could have been concrete. It didn't offer the same earsplitting cacophony that storming down a set of metal stairs would have produced, but his boots slamming heavily down onto each step made a racket of similarly obnoxious magnitude.

This wasn't his mission. Locus was making _that_ abundantly clear. If someone heard them and wondered what the noise was, if someone investigated and it ruined Locus' cover, well whoop de fucking doo. As far as Felix was concerned, it would serve him right for being such a dick.

A small part of him was waiting for a reaction. A snapped demand that he be quiet. A dark look. Even a huff of annoyance, which wouldn't have been audible over the noise he was making but he was watching Locus' back like a hawk. Even without the sensors of his helmet's HUD, he would be able to see the twitch of his shoulders if he breathed out too hard.

But nothing happened. Locus kept going as if he didn't hear any of it. Like Felix didn't even fucking exist.

They’d only gone down three flights of stairs before Locus stopped on a landing, opened the door there, and exited the stairwell. Felix was right behind him, snatching the door before it could slam shut in his face and followed him out into a wide, albeit short hallway. Thick neutral-toned carpet muffled his footsteps and three sconce lights positioned at intervals along green-ochre painted walls cast warm light up and down the length of the hall. It was the kind of decor one expected to find in the high-profile hotels of the galaxy’s rich and famous. It was the kind of place Felix only visited when he had a target to kill or a client to meet, which made him wonder if Locus was here to report to whoever was financing his mission.

If he was, then he was getting even sloppier in his old age than Felix already thought he was. Because Felix still knew jack shit about what was going on here and walking in to meet a client with one partner clueless was just a recipe for disaster. It was the kind of mistake Locus never would have made before and it bothered Felix on some deep, uncomfortable level that he was possibly making it now.

What the fuck had happened in those four years for Locus to get like this? And why hadn’t any of his new _friends_ done anything to prevent it from happening?

There was only two other doors in the hallway: the shiny metal elevator doors and one made of dark wood. Locus went up to the wooden door, fished a keycard out of his pocket, held it up to the lock, and as the click announced it unlocked, opened it and went to go inside. This time, he paused in the doorway with the door held open until Felix took it. Then he turned without a word and walked into the room.

_Suite_ , Felix amended his original assumption a moment later, as he stepped out of what was clearly an actual foyer and into a large room with a high ceiling and a wall comprised mostly of windows. _Penthouse suite._ Half of it was a living room, filled with a huge overstuffed white couch, some armchairs of the same color and fabric, a fluffy area rug, a coffee table of pale wood, and a huge TV screen on the wall. The other half was a full-sized kitchen, complete with granite countertops and a tile floor, and a dining area with a table large enough to seat six people. There was a door off the living area, another off the dining area, and an open one near the kitchen that led into what appeared to be a study of some sort.

The whole thing was done in shades of white and cream and silver. It was very minimalist and no doubt disgustingly expensive. Through the windows, Felix could see the lights of the city’s skyline and wondered what he would see in the light of day. The suite was also oddly empty and silent. There were no clues to identify who might be staying there scattered across any of the surfaces where junk tended to accumulate. There were no sounds of conversation or music filtering in from the hidden parts of the suite. And Locus wasn’t carrying himself like he had entered another’s space.

He was leaning against the kitchen counter, emptying his arsenal from his uniform. Two handguns, half a dozen clips, a knife, whatever the device was that had concealed his true face, his gloves, and what looked to be a phone. His body language was as casual and relaxed as it ever was and the fact that he was disarming meant something that Felix was having a very hard time swallowing.

“Is this place yours?” he asked in disbelief, gesturing with the hand holding his helmet around the room.

“For the moment,” Locus responded evenly, not even bothering to look up from what he was doing.

Never the most even-keeled in the best of situations, Felix felt his shaky grip on his temper slip. He took a step toward Locus, scowling at him in angry frustration. “Can you pretend for five fucking seconds that I have no fucking idea what the hell is going on here and fucking _talk_ to me? This isn’t my fucking fault and okay, I get that this isn’t how you were expecting your day to go but it sure as fuck wasn’t how I thought mine was going to go either.”

Locus finally looked up as Felix’s voice began to rise. There was an odd expression on his face for a few seconds, some mixture of surprise and discomfort and something else that wasn’t readily identifiable. Then, predictably, it disappeared behind a blank mask.

“You tell me I’m in the future,” Felix continued, the words spilling out of his mouth in an uncontrollable rush. “Four fucking _years_ in the future. That I’m _dead_. And there’s no way back because I don’t know what happened to the goddamn grenade and maybe I shouldn’t even be thinking about that because I’m fucking _dead_. And what? That’s it? I’m just supposed to shrug it off, pretend it never happened, and not say anything to you because you can’t be bothered to fucking _talk to me_?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d shouted at Locus over something. Lately, it seemed like they got into disagreements about everything, and though Locus rarely ever raised his voice to him, Felix had no such reservations. But it was the first time in a long fucking stretch of years that Felix openly let on that he was rattled. Anger was fine. Frustration and irritation were both acceptable. Fear, however, was not. Locus had never really seemed to have much patience for it, even back during the war, and after a lot of trial and error, Felix had figured out how to hide his own. He still got scared, unlike Locus he wasn’t a fucking machine and he didn't want to be, but he had learned how to shove it down so deeply inside himself that he could ignore it and pretend he couldn’t feel it. He was so successful at it that more often than not, he even fooled himself. 

But this wasn't charging into a fight with grossly uneven odds. This wasn't a Pelican with a busted engine plummeting out of the sky. This was something so unbelievable that he had never prepared himself for the possibility that it might happen and he had absolutely no idea how to handle it. Locus' unhelpful indifference was just making it worse. Felix wasn't prone to reassurance, but he thought that if their circumstances were reversed, he'd be behaving a _little_ better than Locus was right now.

For a few seconds, they stared at each other in silence. Felix was breathing heavier than he knew he should have been, half out of breath from his tirade and still teetering on the edge of having a panic-stricken screaming fit. Locus didn't move and his blank expression didn't change. Finally, just when Felix started to suck in a lungful of air to start cursing him out in earnest, he spoke.

"Santos Alvaro is an arms dealer," Locus said mildly, surprisingly unperturbed at having to repeat the information. "A dangerous one. Word is that he's trying to sell a type of firearm no one has ever seen before. Do you remember hearing about New Phoenix?"

The question made him blink. "New—What?" Felix shook his head. "What's New Phoenix?" There was a niggling sense of familiarity to the name even as he asked the question, and once he was done speaking, it came to him. "You mean on Earth?"

"Yes."

Earth might have been the human homeworld, but it was almost as distant and foreign to Felix as Sanghelios. He knew about it, everyone did, and even though he'd grown up on one of the colonized worlds, he'd still been taught a significant portion of Earth history. But it wasn't home by any stretch of the imagination and his interest in news about it began and ended with not hearing that some remnant of the Covenant had succeeded in destroying it. After having fought to save it, he wanted it to remain intact and habitable out there in its tiny corner of the galaxy, whether or not he ever bothered to visit the place.

It took him a while of digging through his memories to find anything relevant. Locus stood there patiently, saying nothing, while he did so.

"The Covenant attacked it?" he hazarded uncertainly. "Some splinter group after the cease fire?" That was the best he could do. Under the circumstances, dredging up some memory of gossip exchanged by space pirates in the middle of a life-altering crisis seemed like going above and beyond.

"It wasn't the Covenant."

Felix frowned. "Okay? But I don't see what—"

Locus interrupted, though for once he didn't sound aggravated about it. "The UNSC wished people to believe it was the Covenant. They believed that was safer than the truth." There was a note of disapproval in his voice as he said that. Maybe it was Felix's imagination, but it sounded awfully pointed. "Some time later, the Office of Naval Intelligence released that truth."

The way he said it sounded significant, even important, but Felix drew a blank about what he was getting at. "Did this happen when I was dead?" It came out more sharply sarcastic than he intended. "Because I have no idea what you're talking about."

The spark of attitude garnered no reaction. Locus didn't even blink. "The alien race that created the weapons we found on Chorus attacked Earth. The weapon they used eradicated seven million people with one shot."

"So much for being an ancient race that doesn't exist anymore," Felix muttered under his breath. More normally, he asked, "What was it? Nuclear?"

"No. The city itself was untouched. The land surrounding it was undamaged. Only the humans were affected. No trace of them remained afterward. They disappeared as if they had never existed."

"So it's a biological weapon?"

Locus shook his head. "No one knows precisely what it was. The weapon was destroyed and the aliens killed."

Which told Felix precisely nothing about what this had to do with anything. "And this Alvaro guy is really an alien or what? Stop being so fucking cryptic and spit it out."

Now Locus sighed. "Artifacts were recovered from worlds once occupied by these aliens that suggest they had smaller versions of the weapon they used against Earth. I am uncertain how he did so, but Alvaro has managed to acquire one of them. Sources close to him claim that he seeks to recreate it and mass produce it for the highest bidder."

_Now_ , finally, it made sense. A weapon that would only harm humans would have made their job on Chorus a hell of a lot easier. Fire off a few rounds, make the whole population disappear, Hargrove could have swooped in and claimed all of the alien tech without anyone ever knowing that the place had even still had humans living on it after the war.

"You're trying to stop him?" Presumably it was stop Alvaro and not steal the plans, otherwise why would Locus have destroyed the weapons storage like he had?

"Yes," Locus confirmed. "My mission is to destroy the weapon, any data pertaining to it, and any prototypes he may have already made. Anyone who has been involved in the project is to be terminated."

It sounded like Felix’s initial assumption hadn’t been that far off. “So you are working for ONI now?”

“No.” Locus managed to make him feel like he was ridiculous to ask such a question without ever changing the inflection in his voice. “The military has not changed in four years. Despite the casualties inflicted on Earth, if such a weapon existed, you know as well as I do that even the UNSC would want to get its hands on it.”

Yeah, Felix did know that. He could easily imagine the chaos weapons of that magnitude would have on the galaxy. Everyone with an interest would want some of them. The Covenant splinter groups. Every alien with a grudge against humanity. The Insurrectionists. The UNSC. Ordinary civilians. Criminals. Assassins. Anyone with a grudge against their neighbor. Before too long, _everyone_ would have one and those who didn’t would conveniently vanish from existence. Hell, just thinking about it, Felix wanted one too. Then he could borrow Locus’ Pelican, track down Tucker and all of his little moron friends, and wipe every last one of them out.

“They must be destroyed,” Locus snapped, interrupting his brief detour into a daydream of mayhem. “Just like the Purge needed to be destroyed.”

Felix stared at him. “The what?”

Locus frowned. “A weapon on Chorus capable of killing everyone on it.”

“These aliens sure loved their genocidal weaponry, didn’t they?” Felix’s mutter trailed off into raised eyebrows. “Wait, if one of those things was on Chorus why the fuck didn’t we just use that? We could’ve been in and out in a day, instead of going through that whole civil war bullshit.”

The lines of Locus’ frown were getting deeper and more severe by the second. “We learned of it shortly before your death. And it was destroyed. As it should have been.”

“What?” Felix gaped at him. Surely he hadn’t heard that right. “As it—”

“Weapons like that should not exist,” Locus cut him off, voice as hard as iron. “That’s why I took this mission.”

_In what fucking world does Locus think a weapon shouldn’t exist?_ Felix thought, halfway to saying it out loud before realizing that he knew the answer already. It was this one. This world. The fucking future. More and more, it was becoming like that story from almost a millennium ago; the one where the girl fell down a hole and ended up in some kind of bizarro world where nothing made sense and everybody was on drugs. That was what this felt like. Locus was a familiar face—for the most part, it was still strange to see him with long hair again—and Felix had been to Gilgamesh often enough that he recognized it, but everything else was fucked up.

Locus wasn’t acting like Locus. He didn’t _sound_ like Locus. He was like some kind of alien masquerading as Locus and doing a shitty job of it because he hadn’t taken the time to actually study the guy and learn his mannerisms. _Maybe that’s it_ , he told himself. _Maybe he’s not really Locus at all. Maybe this is a bad fucking dream and I’m going to wake up with one hell of a story to tell the real Locus._  

Except it wasn’t going to be that easy. Much as he might have wanted it to be, Felix knew that that wasn’t how life worked. The easy hand was never the one he got dealt. Sighing, Felix jerked his head to the side in a gesture for Locus to continue his crazy talk.

“So who’s the client if it’s not the military?” It might have been four years, but Felix doubted that the galaxy had changed so much that altruistic pacifists were a dime a dozen. And he couldn’t think of one person or organization that would prefer a weapon of genocidal capabilities be destroyed instead of secured for self-interest.

“There is no client.”

Silence rippled out from that pronouncement, blanketing the room in its thick, oppressive embrace. Felix had to run those four words through his mind a few times to get them to make sense. He examined them from every angle, looking for the code Locus had to be using for incomprehensible reasons. But he couldn’t find anything and the flat expression on Locus’ face indicated that he wasn’t trying to insinuate something contrary to what he was saying.

“You’re doing it for _free?_ ” he exclaimed in disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me? You just happened to hear about this guy and thought, hey I’m not doing anything on Tuesday, why not take him out and destroy his guns? _Really_?”

Locus gave him a withering look. “I was told about Alvaro and what he planned to do. I volunteered to help.”

So there _were_ other people involved. It wasn’t just Locus manifesting crazy by making up some ridiculously retarded philanthropic mission for himself. Irritation surged through Felix then, increasing his topsy-turvy sense of displaced uncertainty and ratcheting his anger up another notch. He couldn’t pinpoint why he felt that way, if it was the further confirmation of these faceless strangers having influence over Locus, the wastefulness of destroying the guns, the fact that Locus was doing it all for nothing, or something else entirely. But then, he didn’t waste time examining the feeling either.

“I don’t understand. Are you one of the good guys again?” It came out sounding like an accusation, and maybe it was. Everything they’d built together after their stint as bounty hunters had fallen apart would be gone if he wasn’t a mercenary anymore.

There was nothing self-conscious or repentant about Locus’ expression or voice when he responded. “I’m trying to be.”

“Jesus Christ.” Disgusted, Felix turned away from him and stalked over to the couch. The impulse to throw his helmet against the wall itched in his fingers, but he suppressed it. He was still wearing the armor. A toss like that would put the helmet through the wall and he didn’t relish the idea of scouring the street below for it afterward.

“Things have changed,” came Locus’ quiet voice from behind him. Felix knew that it was his imagination and proclivity for dramatics, but it still seemed like it was coming from kilometers away instead of just a couple meters.

“No fucking shit,” Felix snapped back, refusing to look at him.

Maybe the religious people were right. Maybe Hell was a real place after all and he’d blown himself into it with that damn grenade. _The future. Please._ He wanted to scoff or laugh at his predicament, but he didn’t want to hear how it would sound. It was a future without him, where Locus had moved on, abandoned everything they’d done for fucking _humanitarianism_ , and replaced him with people who were too spineless and weak to be killers. There had only ever been one place in the universe that Felix had fit, one place where he belonged, and it had been filled in and walled over.

When the war with the Covenant had ended, Felix had looked out at the wide-open galaxy with something like trepidation. They were supposed to put down their guns, go home, and have lives like nothing had happened. Whatever the fuck that had meant. He had no home to go back to and his life was having a gun in his hand and guarding Locus’ back. He wasn’t going to be able to get an office job or work construction or whatever veterans did once the military no longer needed them to die for it. He wasn’t going to pick up a wife, have some kids, and build a fucking house.

He’d survived a war against extinction and he was going to be sent to drown in mundanity and boredom until it killed him. It was a hopeless, terrible feeling that had only abated when Locus had glanced at him, jerked his head toward an unguarded Pelican, and the two of them went AWOL to live life on _their_ terms instead of being honorably discharged into civilian purgatory for their exemplary service.

It had been over a decade since he’d felt that nauseating hopelessness and now it was back, twisting up his stomach and tearing it out all over again.

He was going to have to start over. He was going to have to catch up with four years of history, try to figure out what the march of time had left for him, and struggle to carve out another place for himself. Alone. He had no resources, no ideas, and no allies. It was staggering and overwhelming and Felix couldn’t decide if he was going to be sick or if he needed to get out of the armor and go get phenomenally plastered.

“It’s a lot to take in.” Locus’ voice was still quiet, but it was closer now, like he’d crept up on him while Felix’s attention had been elsewhere.

Felix tensed, the skin at the back of his neck prickling in wariness. Too much was different now. _Locus_ was different. He couldn’t predict him anymore. He couldn’t trust him. For all he knew, Locus was going to turn him in to whatever authority presided over the shit that had happened on Chorus and get money to continue fuelling his do-gooder career. Because if there was one thing that Felix wasn’t, it was a _good_ guy.

“You don’t have to do it all tonight,” Locus continued. From the sound of it, he hadn’t gotten any closer but Felix couldn’t relax. “Go take a shower. I’ll get some clothes brought up. And dinner. You can rest and revisit everything tomorrow.”

That sounded way too solicitous for Locus. Felix glanced over his shoulder, eyeing him with open suspicion. "And what? You're going to call the authorities while I'm preoccupied and unarmed?"

Locus frowned at him like he was being unreasonable. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh please," Felix scoffed. "You know what I've done. There's probably a bounty out there somewhere that would fetch your little charity op a decent paycheck."

The bastard had the audacity to roll his eyes. "You've been dead for years. There isn't a bounty."

His lips pulled back from his teeth in a sneer. "I'm _so_ glad you have your priorities straight."

There was a knife within easy reach of his hand. Locus was fast, but Felix was confident that he could grab it before he could be disarmed. And he was wearing armor. It would take more effort for Locus to hurt him than it would to drive the knife through his throat and kill him. As much as he didn't like the prospect of being dead, he might be able to use it to his advantage and right now, Locus was the only one who knew he was alive. If he killed him, he would have a clean slate.

"I'm not going to turn you in," Locus said in what sounded a lot like his trying and starting to fail at having patience voice.

"How should I know?" Felix retorted with a scowl. Then, because he had relatively little control when he was upset, he threw Locus' words back at him. "It's been four fucking years and _everything_ has changed."

There was some kind of crack in Locus' stoic expression. It was small and fast, visible to Felix only because he was looking at him and was acutely familiar with every permutation of Locus' expressions, but he couldn't decipher what he glimpsed beneath it. There were too many possibilities and some of them didn't even make sense in the context of the situation. 

"I'm not going to turn you in," Locus repeated, voice slightly tighter than before. "You're as safe here as I am."

It was probably supposed to be some type of reassurance, but it really wasn't. Felix was better at double-talk than Locus was. He always had been and Locus' precious fucking four years weren't enough to change that. Imagining all of the ways it wasn't safe at all was incredibly easy to do. Since he was looking at him, eyeing him for a clue as to which direction the attack would come from, Felix saw the instant where Locus finally lost patience with him.

"Felix, for fuck's sake," he snapped, taking a step toward him. Felix's hand went to the knife, fingers closing around the grip but not plucking it from the magnetic sheath. It was a warning; one that he knew Locus saw and understood, because that step was the only one he took. "You're being ridiculous."

Felix snorted. "Oh, okay." Not willing to release the knife, he pointed the helmet at Locus and continued with acidic sarcasm. "You can threaten me and smack me around all you want, but when I suddenly don't trust you for some _mysterious_ reason, _I'm_ the ridiculous one."

"I thought you were an imposter!" Locus barked, not _quite_ yelling at him.

Ordinarily, getting that much of an emotional response out of him would have made Felix feel perversely satisfied. Right now, it just annoyed him. And he was already annoyed that his hands were full and that he didn't have enough of them for all the finger jabbing he wanted to do. Briefly, he entertained the notion of throwing the helmet at Locus' big fat head.

"The only imposter here is _you_!" he shouted back, taking his hand off the knife to indulge the cathartic impulse to point his finger at him. It was nice, but it wasn't nearly as satisfying as hitting him with the helmet would have been.

Especially when Locus gave him a confused stare. "What are you talking about?"

Felix's eyebrows rose and they took his voice with them. "You quit the mission. You let the enemy go. Now you're gallivanting around like the protector of the fucking universe, taking everybody's guns away! What the fuck is wrong with you?"

It was like some kind of universal balancing act. The louder and angrier he got, the quieter and calmer Locus became. _That_ , at least, hadn't changed. "Calm down," Locus told him evenly.

That just incised him further. "I'm in the fucking _future_ , Locus. I lost everything! Try having your whole world turn upside-down and tell me how fucking calm you are!"

"I did!" Locus snapped, harsh and sharp and angrier than he'd been since they disembarked from the Pelican.

Years ago, Locus talked about his thoughts and feelings. Not frequently and not to any heartwarming extent, but he used to admit that he had them and the two of them could carry on a conversation like normal people. They used to trade jokes—sometimes Locus even _laughed_ —and discuss what they thought of missions, targets, and whatever new roadblock got in the way of reaching their goals. Felix remembered it in a distance, sepia-toned nostalgic way, like he was recalling scenes from an old movie he used to enjoy.

To hear Locus admit to having gone through anything that affected him on an emotional level now was jarring and strange. It added to the surreal quality of Felix's current quandary and emphasized how quickly everything had changed between attacking that site on Chorus and waking up in the warehouse. How unpredictable Locus was and impossible it was to anticipate how he might react to something.

Felix stared at him through narrowed eyes, trying to puzzle out what he was talking about and coming up with nothing. The only thing he knew with certainty was that Locus wasn't talking about what had happened to them years ago. They didn't talk about that under any circumstances. They hadn't discussed Siris for years, except in the occasional oblique mention that they both pretended was absolutely innocent and meaningless, and four years of playing galactic hero wasn't going to change that.

Whatever it was must have happened in the time between his death on Chorus and now, but what made a hardened, remorseless killer abruptly change his ways? Felix couldn't fathom it.

"I went through more than you know or can possibly understand," Locus said into the silence, once again using his calm and rational voice. It was like the outburst never happened. Felix wondered idly if Locus thought that simply ignoring something made it immediately go away. "But that doesn't make me your enemy. Stop treating me like I am."

Viewed from a certain angle, it was an olive branch. Felix wasn't taking it. "Maybe if you fucking _talked to me_ I would understand."

Again, he responded in that placid tone. "I'm trying to talk to you. You keep shouting at me."

Locus was too straightforward to be manipulative, or at least he'd _been_ too straightforward before the future had gotten a hold of him and turned him into a stranger, but Felix still read the comment as an attempt to subtly shut him up. And that just provoked him into shouting at him. "Do you blame me?!"

"No." It was simple disagreement. Locus' expression remained unperturbed by Felix's volume. "But I told you already. This doesn't need to be sorted out tonight. There's plenty of time now. Take some of it. Deal with this first." He made a short sideways gesture that was obviously meant to encompass the fact that Felix was in the future. "We can discuss the rest later."

It finally occurred to him what was bothering him about the way Locus was talking to him. It wasn't that Locus was being calm in the face of everything being fucked up. That was oddly comforting: proof that despite what he'd said, not absolutely everything had been turned upside-down and inside out. Locus had always been a rock of imperturbable composure no matter how much shit was hitting the fan and Felix had come to rely on that solidity. When they'd been stranded on a dying planet, watching the city they'd fought to evacuate being glassed by Covenant invaders, Locus had calmly surveyed their surroundings and their meager supply of bullets, assessed just how fucked they were, and then had offered half a dozen plans of various levels of futility and suicidal recklessness in a voice as unconcerned as if he'd been commenting on the cloudiness of the skies. And in the middle of an impossible, no win scenario, one of those stupid plans had saved their lives. 

Locus' composure wasn't the problem. It was the fact that he was talking to Felix like he was a wild animal, utterly beyond reason or comprehension of the situation. Like if he just kept talking in that smooth, steady tone, Felix would lower his hackles, stop baring his teeth, and nuzzle up against him for pets and reassurance. It was fucking insulting.

"Or," he shot back coldly, "we could do it now and get it over with."

A sharp headshake was Locus' answer. "That won't help you."

The harsh laughter that burst out of him at that actually hurt Felix's throat. "Right. Because _helping_ me matters to you."

It might have once. Years ago, Locus could have said shit like that and Felix wouldn't have batted an eye in disbelief. But that was a long fucking time ago and he knew it was all bullshit now. Locus would shoot him—and had, more than once—before he'd deign to help him.

"It does," Locus said quietly. His gaze was steady on Felix's face, his posture straight-backed and uncompromising.

Felix didn't believe it for a second. "Since when?" he challenged.

"Since I failed to do it on Chorus."

Neither the admission nor the immediate, forthright way Locus said it was what he'd been expecting. Felix stared at him, halfway taken aback. That wasn't like Locus at all. Not the Locus who had accepted Hargrove's job with him, at any rate. It was more like the Locus from before. It was more like _Sam_. And Sam was long gone.

Frowning, Felix folded his arms across his chest. "Guilt?" It came out a sneer and he didn't bother to correct it. "Really?"

If Locus said yes, he was going to call him on his lame attempt at manipulation. Then he'd probably throw the helmet at him after all. There was really only so much a man could take and all of this was pushing that limit to the breaking point. Felix braced himself, muscles tensing for an outburst of violence.

And Locus thwarted him. "It's more complicated than that," he said, though he didn't continue with an explanation as to _how_ it was more complicated. He just threw the words out there like frag grenades and let the shrapnel go wherever it wanted.

Unimpressed, Felix didn't say anything in response. Instead, he glowered at him, his prickly sense of dissatisfaction spiking sharply. So that was how it was going to be. Locus was going to withhold information from him—information he obviously fucking needed—under some asinine guise of helping him. But it wasn’t going to help. It was going to drive him crazy. As it stood, the fact that he had done something as impossible as travel through time was the only thing that was preventing him from freaking out over having been killed. Once he made whatever peace he was going to make with that, his attention was going to circle back to being dead and latch onto that.

Locus knowing the details of what happened to him and refusing to share them was just going to make that obsession worse. And Locus should have known that. He knew how Felix was. He knew he wasn’t just going to let any of it go.

_I’m going to have to find out the answers myself_ , he realized unhappily. _Check the internet, maybe. News sites. Other places. See what anyone’s pieced together about Chorus and my part in it._ Hargrove becoming directly involved in the debacle had to have brought the planet and what was going on there into the public eye. The UNSC wasn’t going to be able to cover that up and sweep the guy under the proverbial rug. They’d have to make a statement. They’d have to find somewhere to pin the blame.

Felix didn’t doubt for an instant that he was the scapegoat. He’d been in the military long enough to see how it worked and he’d been around people, dealing with them and manipulating them, to know how to effectively utilize the resources available to fabricate an explanation _and_ provide closure and reassurance. The headline practically painted itself in his mind: Chairman Hargrove led astray by dead mercenary. A neat explanation that would take the heat off of the UNSC and their negligence in putting Hargrove into such a position of power in the first place and tidy it all up with one convenient dead body.

There would be information. Hell, the sims probably provided the bulk of it. Tucker was incapable of keeping his mouth shut and Felix could just imagine their idiotic Sergeant blabbing his take on the whole thing to anyone who would listen. He would find it. He would deal with it. And he’d hunt down every one of those motherfuckers and put a bullet or six into them. Then he could figure out what he wanted to do with his bizarre second chance at life.

He must have been silent too long, because Locus shifted his weight and sighed. “Felix—”

“Whatever,” Felix cut him off gracelessly. He didn’t want to hear more useless cryptic nonsense or transparent redirects. And he certainly didn’t want to have to consider the possibility that Locus actually felt some level of remorse for what had happened to him. “Where’s the shower?”

Locus let him change the subject. He pointed toward one of the open doorways. “The guest suite is through there.”

Felix shot him a narrow-eyed glance. “You have a lot of those?”

“No,” Locus responded immediately.

_Don’t you?_ He wanted to challenge him. Someone was passing him intel and top secret ONI-grade tech. Chances were high that even if Locus gave him a name it wouldn’t mean anything to Felix, but he still wanted it anyway. The same way he knew picking at a scab wasn’t going to help a wound heal but often couldn’t keep his fingers away from it.

“I’ll leave clothes on the bed,” Locus continued, once it became apparent that Felix wasn’t going to say anything else.

“Fine,” he said shortly, tone still icy.

No matter what he said, Felix didn’t trust him and didn’t relish turning his back on him. But he also couldn’t live in the armor and it had been a long time since he’d had a _real_ shower. There’d been showers jury-rigged back at the New Republic’s base, but at best they’d been a step above using a wash cloth and basin of water. The water pressure had been terrible, the water had smelled weird, the showers were public and often not cleaned to the standard Felix preferred, and what passed for the army’s supply of soap had been abrasive and foul-smelling. The prospect of having a luxury shower and its amenities all to himself was a little too tempting to ignore.

He shot one last wary glance Locus’ way, then stalked off toward the doorway. Stepping through it revealed a spacious bedroom, outfitted with a huge bed covered in comforters and sheets that Felix knew just by glancing at were expensive and soft, a large dresser, a floor-length mirror, a set of chairs arranged on either side of a small table, and a pair of nightstands. A smaller closed door suggested a closest, and when he opened it and peered in, he found his assumption confirmed. It was empty, corroborating Locus’ story about no one else living here, and roomy enough to walk into and hang up dozens of outfits. A second door, standing open, led into a spacious bathroom done in pale blues and white. There was a tub in there _and_ a separate shower. Oversized fluffy towels lined a bar on the wall near the shower.

It was the kind of luxury a man starved for such creature comforts could easily get used to living with on a daily basis.

Heading back to the bedroom, Felix shut the door leading out into the rest of the suite, resisted the temptation to lock it, and went through the complicated procedure necessary to get out of the armor. He left it stacked into a neat pile, the weapons laid out in easy reach on the top of the dresser, and peeled off the undersuit. His naked skin immediately prickled in the cool air, but it was a refreshing kind of chill that felt better than it didn’t. Tossing the suit over the chair, Felix snagged his knife and went into the bathroom.

This time, he did lock the door. It wouldn’t stop Locus if he wanted in, but the minor delay in getting it open would give Felix time to arm himself and set up a proper defense. Maybe that was too paranoid, maybe he was overreacting in as exaggerated a fashion as Locus clearly thought he was, but Felix couldn’t shake his sense of unease and he wasn’t looking to die after going through all of this time-travel nonsense and narrowly escaping death in the first place.

Setting the knife within easy reach of the shower, Felix rummaged through a cabinet until he found soap and shampoo, grabbed a towel, and got in. The water pressure was everything it wasn't on Chorus, strong enough to feel like a weak massage. He cranked the heat up as high as he could tolerate and then stood unmoving under the spray for a few minutes, letting the hot water pound against his skin until some of the months' old tension eased up. The air quickly got thick and steamy, but Felix didn't care. He would breathe through it quite happily if it meant not having to get out of the water.

Eventually the restlessness set in and he started washing what felt like two years' worth of grime from his skin. He took his goddamn time about it, leisurely scrubbing a heaping handful of shampoo into his hair and then spending the better part of five minutes trying to get all the suds out. It'd been a while since he'd last had a haircut; plastered down by the water, the top was starting to brush his ears and the sides were a little _too_ fuzzy.

_Tomorrow, I'm getting a haircut_ , he decided. _And some new fucking clothes._ Nice _clothes. Not any of that ugly utilitarian shit._ Visions of fancy, expensive suits in whatever the latest style was here in the future and actual shoes filled his thoughts for the rest of the shower. It was an unintentional distraction from the real issues at hand and a subtle, unconscious way to ease himself into the reality of his situation. _Maybe go out for some real food too. Steak. Wine. Hell, might as well get dessert while I'm at it._

Money wasn't a problem. Locus clearly had a lot of it if he could afford something like this for his base of operations. And if he proved to be a stingy fuck about it, Felix was confident that he could get it through other, possibly questionable means. This was Gilgamesh. There were at least a dozen ways to make a few credits two steps outside the building in any direction. A few hours in the city and he didn't doubt that he'd be able to acquire thousands in no time.   

By the time he finally shut the water off, Felix's skin was pruny and red from a combination of vigorous scrubbing and the heat. It took actual effort to open the door and step out into the comparably colder air of the bathroom. Nothing had been disturbed during his shower; the door was still locked and the knife was where he'd left it on the sink. That was heartening right up until the instant that Felix's wary paranoia kicked in and told him that just because Locus had kept his word so far didn't mean he wasn't trying to lure him into a false sense of complacency. It wasn't enough to coax him into letting down his guard.

Felix toweled off his hair and upper body with the fast efficiency of a soldier conditioned to do this shit quickly, then tied the towel securely around his waist and picked up the knife. He wasn't modest by any stretch of the imagination—his body was a well-honed weapon, all muscle and long limbs, marred only by the scars that proved he was a survivor—but he didn't feel like fighting naked if he didn't have to. He'd done it before and it hadn't been a pleasant enough experience to want to repeat it.

Cracking open the door, he peered out into the bedroom, tense and ready for anything. But the room was empty and the door leading out into the rest of the suite was closed. The only sign that Locus had been in there was the pile of clothing lying neatly folded on the center of the bed. Felix eyed it for a moment, safe on the other side of the room, then approached and, after setting the knife down on the bed, sorted through it all.

There were three pairs of pants: jeans, black trousers, and black athletic pants that were soft enough that Felix could sleep in them if he wanted to do so. Five shirts in black and shades of grey: two t-shirts, a long-sleeved Henley, and a button-down. Enough socks and boxers to last him a week. A black leather jacket. And shoes: black dress shoes, loafers, and a pair of boots. The colors were blander than what he would have picked himself, but black never went out of style. Underneath it all was a small toiletry bag containing a sharpened straight-razor, shaving cream, clippers, a hairbrush, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, deodorant, and a small bottle of liquid that was unidentifiable until Felix pulled the cap off and took a sniff. It had been years since he’d smelled this particular brand of cologne, one he’d favored back when they’d spent more time planet-side living like civilized people. The cologne—along with decent showers, good food, comfortable beds, and nice clothes—had just been another casualty of going to Chorus.

The message was clear enough even for Felix’s wary paranoia and pervasive unease. Locus had put thought into the order he’d given to whoever had procured all this shit on such short notice. It spoke to how much money Locus had here. Or maybe just how high up the scale this building was.

Picking up the toiletry bag, Felix returned to the bathroom. After his lengthy shower, there was no sense in doing things by half-measures. If he was going to successfully leave Chorus behind him, he was going to do it right. The shower had taken him nearly half an hour. He took another thirty minutes getting himself back into proper order.

A shave first, to get rid of the stubble and scruff that had grown in unevenly since his last stint with one of those shitty disposable razors that were available everywhere on Chorus. Then a haircut: he took a good three centimeters off the top and buzzed the rest back to the length he preferred. He brushed his teeth, he flossed, he washed his face again. He didn’t anticipate an active night, but he put on the deodorant just for the sake of being able to do it. Once he cleaned up all the fallen hair, he went back into the bedroom to get dressed.

Here again was evidence of Locus’ attention to detail. Felix couldn’t quite bring himself to label him _thoughtful_. The clothes fit. Felix had lost a little weight on Chorus, but nothing he put on now was too big or loose where it shouldn’t be. After a few seconds’ deliberation, Felix chose to let the knife behind when he finally padded barefoot out into the rest of the suite.

The aroma of seasoned steak and fresh bread hit him as soon as he opened the door. Locus had said he was going to get dinner, but Felix had been expecting something mediocre. Sandwiches, maybe. Or burgers. Greasy, unremarkable food made to be wolfed down instead of savored. Not an actual _meal_.

He followed his nose into the dining room and found a place laid there for him. Just him. Locus was nowhere to be found. There was a glass of red wine and a small plate of flaky rolls arranged around the main plate, which was laden with steak, roasted potatoes, some kind of long green vegetable that was probably native to the planet, and something that looked suspiciously like scallops. On the other side of the rolls was another plate that contained a huge piece of cheesecake covered in strawberries.

It was better looking than what he’d been imagining in the shower and for nearly half a minute he stood there staring at it, weirdly apprehensive about touching it. His stomach growled furiously, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten in a long fucking time, but it felt a little too unreal to sit down. It was like Locus had read his fucking mind and that was fucking creepy.

“It isn’t poisoned,” came the smooth, mild sound of Locus’ voice from off to his left.

Felix glanced over, expression stuck halfway to a frown at being caught out. “Poisoning one-oh-one, Locus,” he retorted automatically. “You never tell the mark it’s poisoned.”

Locus responded with a blandly patient stare. He was propped up against the kitchen counter with a mug of something steaming near his elbow, hair pulled back and wearing an outfit almost identical to what Felix had chosen: a long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of lounge pants. “You were at the abandoned weapons bunker prior to your arrival here, were you not?”

“Yes.” Where he was going with that, Felix didn’t know. All it told him was that Locus had decided to listen to what he’d been saying, which admittedly had been somewhat debatable there for a while.

“On the way back, you spent most of the trip complaining about the rations and expressing a desire for what you see there.” Locus nodded toward the spread on the table. “I believe you specified green beans during your diatribe, however they are not available here.”

Slowly, Felix’s gaze slid away from Locus and settled on the food, the nape of his neck prickling so hard that he had to fight to suppress the shiver. It was just so fucking _weird_ to hear about something he’d done when he hadn’t done it yet. And it was such a stupid, trivial thing to remember. Felix complained about everything about Chorus all the time. One bitchfest about food wasn’t memorable at all. But Locus _had_ remembered it. Not only that, but he’d remembered enough to actually reproduce whatever food-fueled fantasy Felix had been droning on about _four years ago_.

Why had he bothered? Felix wanted to ask as badly as he didn’t. He wasn’t _afraid_ of the answer, but he was pretty sure it was going to be something he didn’t want to hear. It was better to just move forward.

“Never got it, did I?” Felix asked lightly, like he was merely poking fun at the terrible quality of food on Chorus and the prevalence of the rations, not like there were any serious connotations to the subject.

“No,” Locus said darkly, evidently opting not to play along. “You did not.”

_Tough crowd_. Felix turned back to the food, eyed it a moment longer, and then pushed the chair out and sat down. “Did you eat already?” he called over his shoulder as he picked up a knife and fork.

“Yes.” The tiniest pause followed, before Locus commented dryly, “You were in there a long time.”

The comment reminded Felix a little of the way they used to banter with one another. On Chorus, the banter often crossed the line into pointed insult. But before Chorus, before it had all gone to shit, they’d sniped sarcastically at each other in a way that was mostly toothless and just plain fun. 

“Gave you enough time to eat in peace, didn’t it?” Felix shot back, sounding far more confident in his delivery than he actually was. He’d spent most of his life with Locus and for the first time, on top of every other world-shattering fucking thing, he was coming to realize that he didn’t know how to talk to him anymore.

He probably shouldn’t have wasted the mental resources worrying about it. Locus ruined it anyway.

“I’ve had enough of that time,” he said. There wasn’t really any emotion attached to the words, Locus had mastered the emotionless tone long before he picked up a voice modulator, but Felix knew he was talking about the expanse of time between his death and now. Although why that mattered was too tangled up in the twisted confusion of Locus’ fucked up mind for him to puzzle out.

As Felix watched him, Locus pushed away from the counter and picked up his neglected mug. It seemed as if Locus was going to join him at the table, but once he cleared the counter, he moved toward the study. “I have some work to do,” Locus said as he neared the door. “Enjoy your dinner.”

That was it. Locus disappeared inside and shut the door, leaving Felix sitting alone at the big table in the equally huge room. He stared at the closed door, feeling like he’d walked into a movie in the middle of a complicated plot and was unable to catch up. Knowing he wasn’t going to be able to put it together right then, Felix shrugged, looked down at his dinner, and tucked into it.

The food was everything his flavor-starved taste buds could have asked for. Felix ate all of it, though instead of wolfing it down like a starving man, he took his time and savored it. Throughout the meal, Locus remained in the study, doing his work so quietly that Felix heard nothing from him. Once he was done eating, he took the dishes into the kitchen and washed them for lack of anything better to do. Not knowing where they went, he left them on the counter and went into the living room with the vague intention of sitting down and maybe looking through whatever channels the TV had.

He knew he could interrupt whatever Locus was doing and demand the conversation he was being denied. Ordinarily, that was exactly what he would have done. But Locus was uncomfortably more like a stranger than his partner and something about that held him back. It wasn’t fear of Locus; as violent and strong as Locus was, Felix had never been afraid of him personally. If he had to classify it, he would say it was more akin to fear of the unknown. He knew with the bone-deep kind of dread he’d felt watching a Covenant battlecruiser glass a once-thriving city that he wasn’t going to enjoy the conversation whenever they finally had it and he’d had enough upheaval in the last few hours. He didn’t want to deal with more.

The couch was comfortable. Unsurprising really, since everything in the suite appeared to be designed for the discriminating occupant. Felix wondered idly if Locus ever sat on it. There wasn't anything on the coffee table and the pillows weren't askew, two things that would have suggested some kind of use. _He_ would have brought his work out here and sprawled out on the couch, probably with the TV on in the background and a cold beer leaving moisture rings on the table. But that was probably too leisurely for someone like Locus. Fun might seep into his ass through contact with the couch and infect him with the desire to do something other than work every waking minute of his fucking life.

Felix had no work to do, and he probably wouldn't have done it if he did, and no ice-cold beer to slop up the table, but he spread out on the couch like it was his job. It was only after he'd gotten comfortable that he realized that the remote for the TV was all the way on the other side of the room, sitting on the console underneath the screen. Yet another indicator that Locus probably wasn't using it very often.  

Deciding that he'd get up and get it in a minute, Felix turned his gaze toward the ceiling and stared at it sightlessly while he went over the last few hours. It wasn't getting any easier to believe, no matter how many times he thought about it, but it also wasn't going away. This was his reality now, he knew, and the sooner he accepted it, or pretended to accept it with enough conviction that he'd fool himself for a while, the better off he'd be and the faster he'd get out of this miserable hole of helplessness and self-pity.

And really, it wasn't the bit about being in the future that was the _real_ problem. It was being dead. It was knowing that the fucking _sim troopers_ had killed him. It was the unbridgeable chasm between the Locus he knew in the past and the one he was stuck with now. It felt like a gap in his memory, even though he knew it wasn't, and he couldn't stand it. He couldn't stand the not knowing or the knowledge that he'd been weak enough to get killed. And to make matters worse, it had happened right in front of Locus, if he was understanding Locus' unhelpful answers correctly.

Felix didn't know how to make any of that useful to him. He couldn't spin his death into something that reflected positively on him. Locus had to think he was weak now. The strong survived and the weak perished. And Locus had _seen_ him fall. There wasn't any coming back from that. 

_It doesn't matter if I'm dead_ , he told himself firmly. _Because_ I'm _not dead. It doesn't fucking matter what Locus remembers. I'm here now. I'm alive. I'll find out exactly what happened. I won't make the same mistake again._

As for what to do about Locus, he didn't have a fucking clue. But he'd figure something out. He knew he would. He always had before. There was no reason to think that he couldn't do it again.

Yawning, Felix twisted over onto his side and looked across the gulf between the couch and the TV. He rubbed at his forehead with the heel of his hand, weighing his determination to watch the news against the sluggishness brought on by a stomach full of heavy food and potent wine. He wanted to do it. But he also wanted to just lay there and close his eyes for a moment.

_In a minute_ , he thought, yawning again. _I'll get up in a minute..._

* * *

It seemed like a blink. Just one, but it was as disorienting as fuck. Because one second the room was awash in the warm light pouring out of the suite's many lamps and fixtures and the next it was dark and there was something on top of him gently smothering him. Jolting upward, Felix thrashed around as he pushed himself up onto his elbows, confused and halfway toward alarm. The weight moved with him, sliding partway down his chest by the time he got himself into a sitting position. Whether it was the burst of adrenaline or the movement that did it, the disorientation was purged from his brain and he realized that he’d fallen asleep. On Locus’ expensive couch. In Locus’ weird-ass penthouse suite. In the future.

_And there was a blanket on him_.

Oddly, that was the part he was having the most difficulty wrapping his mind around as he came fully into wakefulness. There was a blanket on him. When he’d dozed off, there hadn’t been a blanket. He was sure of that. He was _one hundred percent_ sure of that.

So where the fuck had the blanket come from?

Had he woken up earlier, snatched it from the bed in the guest room, brought it back out here, fallen asleep, and forgotten about it? Had it been on the back of the couch the whole time and some idle movement during slumber simply caused it to fall on him? Had Locus been out here trying to suffocate him with it and accidentally woke him up?

Squinting into the darkness, Felix was unable to see the darker shadow of another person amidst the rest of the shades of black and grey. He stopped breathing, ignored the pounding of his heart, and tried to listen for the sounds that a hidden assailant would make: the not quite muffled breath, the whispery rustle of fabric, maybe the crack of a joint or the jingle of unsecured metal. But he couldn’t hear anything either. Just his heart doing double-time in his chest.

There was an obvious answer to the blanket conundrum. Locus, as the only other occupant of the suite, could have easily draped it over him while he slept. But that seemed more farfetched and unlikely than the stupid thing being brought over by a ghost.

Locus acted like he was above creature comforts. He acted like he was impervious to meager discomforts. There was no way in hell he would give a damn about whether Felix was warm while he was sleeping in a temperature controlled building. Maybe if they were out in the wilderness and there was a very real possibility of freezing to death. Then _maybe_. But inside? No fucking way.

It was enough to make an already surreal experience a hundred times worse.

Felix didn’t know what to do. He had no fucking idea what to do. He sat there paralyzed, feeling like everything was spiraling out of control so fast that he might as well have been in a Pelican careening toward the side of a mountain. It was like that fucking disaster with Lozano all over again; that sinking, chilling horror at being outmaneuvered, outgunned, outclassed, and completely fucked. And it was the memory of that fiasco that snapped him out of it. Because he hadn’t thought about that bullshit bounty for years and the memories it danced on the edges of had the same effect as taking a spray of icy water face first.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, Felix pushed the blanket off and swung his legs over the side of the couch, intending to grope his way to the kitchen and get a drink. Then, he figured, he’d finally watch some TV and clear his head before trying to go back to sleep. It was a sensible plan, but as he got to his feet, Felix noticed the thin outline of light under the study door.

Locus was still awake. Or possibly he’d died in there. With Locus and his obsessive work ethic, it was often hard to tell.

Curiosity drew Felix toward that rectangle of light. He moved slowly, careful to avoid banging into furniture and alerting Locus to his proximity. Of course, it was possible that Locus had the whole suite bugged and was watching him creep closer on some infrared monitoring system. Felix didn’t _think_ it was likely, but since it was Locus, he at least had to consider the possibility. That man was prepared for _everything_.

As luck would have it, he made it to the door without incident. Felix didn’t touch it, but he leaned in closer to it, holding his breath again as he tried to listen for any clue as to what Locus might be doing inside. 

This time, he wasn’t disappointed.

“Unfortunately not,” came the low, yet still audible sound of Locus’ voice. Softly, Felix exhaled. “There were… complications.”

Felix strained to hear the response, feeling an almost giddy sense of anticipation over finally discovering who Locus’ secret associates were. But he heard nothing. Not even an unintelligible murmur. Whatever Locus was using to communicate, it wasn’t broadcasting the other speaker.

There was just enough time for Felix to think, _Goddamn it. Of all the fucking luck_. Then Locus started speaking again.

“No, nothing like that.” The surety in his voice dissolved. “It’s…” Felix could hear him sigh. “It’s difficult to explain.”

Even in the face of overwhelming odds, Locus never sounded defeated. Tired, yes. Frustrated, absolutely. Angry or disappointed, of course. But defeat was something Locus had left behind with the smooth, unmarred skin of his face. He didn’t sound defeated now either, but there was a faint note of something in his voice that Felix didn’t often hear. He struggled with it, trying to place it, and nearly missed what Locus said next.

“I don’t know.” A long stretch of silence, heavy with the sort of anticipation that made Felix hold his breath again. “I found Felix.”

Subconsciously, maybe Felix had been hoping to eavesdrop on Locus talking to someone about him. Maybe it wasn’t just about putting a voice to one of the faceless people who had taken his place in Locus’ life. Maybe it was because he wanted to overhear him talking to someone about whatever it was he wouldn’t tell Felix directly, thereby saving them both the undoubtedly awful conversation that it was going to be. It was difficult to tell. Felix didn’t examine the jolt of impatient curiosity that rattled through him, making it nearly impossible to stand still while he waited to hear more.

“No,” Locus said firmly. “Felix. He’s alive.” He fell silent, though this time it didn’t last very long. Either whoever was on the other end didn’t say much or Locus cut the person off, Felix couldn’t tell. “I saw him die. No, this isn’t…” A hard sigh interrupted wherever he’d been going with that. “He’s from the past.”

It wasn’t terribly difficult to fill in the gaps of the conversation. Whoever Locus was talking to either knew who Felix was or had heard enough about him to be able to follow along without needing to ask for clarification. It was both a blessing, because Felix wasn’t overly lost by the one-sidedness of the conversation, and a curse, because either this person was actually close to Locus—enough that he voluntarily spoke about his past—or it was someone who knew Felix. Which would make it someone _Felix_ knew.

And no one Felix knew these days was anyone that he could imagine working with Locus like this. Murdering people, sure. Killers were a credit a dozen and with his reputation, Locus could have had any mercenary he wanted at his side. But someone to go around righting wrongs with and protecting people from their own greed and stupidity? No way. No one Felix knew would put up with that shit.

“There was an incident with a teleportation grenade,” Locus was saying calmly, the cadence of his voice falling into the familiar measured tones he used whenever he was giving a mission briefing. “I don’t remember anything unusual happening during the events he described, but he’s not lying.”

There was a faint pause before Locus hummed an affirmative note. “Yes. I would know if he was.”

_Was what?_ Felix wondered immediately. _He would know if I was what?_ There was no question in his mind that Locus was referring to him. _Lying? Why the fuck would I lie about this?_

“Yes,” Locus continued, answering a question that Felix couldn’t guess at until he heard the rest of the answer. “He had just arrived.”

_At the warehouse. He has to be talking about the warehouse. Which means that this isn’t just one of his associates._ Felix scowled at the door as if it was at fault for all of this. _It’s someone he’s working this op with. A partner? Is that his new fucking partner?_

The anticipation was starting to curdle into something bitter and ugly. Felix was no longer sure he wanted to hear the rest of this, but he couldn’t step back out of earshot either. Not now that he knew that Locus was talking to someone important. He was committed whether he wanted to be or not. His curiosity, damnable thing that it was, kept him rooted to the spot.

“Yes.” Felix’s eyes narrowed. Was it his imagination or did Locus sound defensive? It wasn’t overt, just a slight shift in his inflection, but Felix knew the nuances of Locus’ voice. He knew how skillfully he could wield subtlety of tone. And he knew that some son of a bitch had just put _Locus_ on edge. “The building was destroyed. I could not leave him.”

Felix itched to shove open the door and confront... He wasn't certain. Locus. The partner. Both of them. He took a deep, centering breath and forcibly kept his hand away from the door.

"I'm fine." The defensiveness was gone from Locus' voice, replaced by something that sounded suspiciously placating. "It was a shock, but I'm dealing with it."

Not once had Locus snapped at the other person. If it had been Felix having this conversation with him, badgering him about whatever subject, Locus would have lost patience with him already. He would have snapped or told him to shut up and mind his own business. But this asshole was getting _placated_? Felix ground his teeth together.

"No," Locus said. "Not completely. He remembers some of what happened on Chorus, but not all of it. He comes from a time when we had not yet discovered the Purge."

This time, Felix recognized the word. The Purge. The weapon they'd supposedly found that would have ended the fucking job and yet hadn't used. Presumably, the same kind of weapon Locus was trying to destroy now. Or something like it. So either the partner had been on Chorus and knew what the Purge was or Locus had given a detailed enough report that it didn't require explanation.

_One of the pirates?_ Felix wracked his brain to remember even _one_ of the pirates competent enough to make a worthy partner for Locus. None of them were up to par. It was possible, in a nebulously theoretical kind of way, that there was someone else they were going to meet in the future and Felix just hadn't gotten there yet, but they weren't going to leave Chorus until the job was done. So unless another idiot landed on the planet, that didn't seem likely.

"Confused," Locus said, seemingly apropos to nothing until he continued. "Uncertain. He's sleeping now."

_The fucker's asking about me._ Why that made him even angrier, Felix didn't know, but the surge of white-hot fury was unmistakable. _Mind your own fucking business._ In the silence, he could hear his heart, each pounding beat loud to his ears. There was going to be blood tonight. It was inevitable. That was the only way to rid himself of the anger. 

"No," Locus said, breaking into his increasingly murderous musings. "That won't be necessary." Another minute pause followed. "Yes. He won't be able to manipulate me anymore." Felix froze, the air he'd been inhaling turning to ice in his lungs. "And your presence would just upset him."

Locus knew. He _knew_.

For a moment, it seemed like time had stalled, preventing Felix from getting past the chilling realization that his hold on Locus had slipped. _He fucking knew_. It didn't seem possible. How the hell could he have known? Felix would have never told him. Even on his goddamn death bed, he would have taken that secret to the grave. So how the fuck had he learned the truth? He hadn't figured it out himself, Felix was positive about that. There was just no way. He'd been clueless for _years_. It wasn't like he could have woken up one morning and realized what was going on. If that was going to happen, Locus would have done it long ago when Felix was still figuring out how to play him.

But it wasn't like anyone could have told him either. No one knew. Felix never told _anyone_ what he was doing. That was an amateur's mistake, and much as he might have bragged about his prowess in battle, he never did it about the shit that was actually important. He was not, contrary to popular belief, a fucking idiot. 

It was the aching in his chest that finally forced him into breathing again, but each sip of air he took was shallow and erratic. Felix didn't know what the fuck to do. What tiny modicum of control he thought he'd had in this situation was gone. He was in a tailspin for real now and he was going to crash.

There was something else itching at his mind, demanding his attention, and when he grudgingly widened his focus to accept it, Felix realized what else Locus had said. The mystery partner's presence would _upset_ him. He hadn't misheard it. He knew that. But instead of clearing it up for him, it just made the confusion worse. Because who could possibly upset him? Siris? It wasn't Siris. It _couldn't_ be Siris. He'd been transported to the future, hadn't he? Not some alternate reality where the past had been rewritten.

_Jesus Christ, don't go there. Don't fucking go there. Focus. Fucking focus. He's talking again._

"—don't know," Felix tuned back in to hear Locus say calmly. Too fucking calmly for a man who knew his partner—former partner now?—had been manipulating him for so many years. "It will depend on him. If he's willing to listen, perhaps I can reach him." A heavy, weary sounding sigh followed. "Make up for my inability to do so before."

_What the fuck is he talking about?_ _Reach me? About what?_ None of it was making any sense. Locus was saying things that should have been making him angry, but he didn't sound terribly put out over anything. If Felix really stretched his imagination, he thought he almost sounded _regretful_ , and that was patently ridiculous.

Except weird shit had been happening since that moment on the Pelican when they’d both realized each other’s real identity. Locus had vacillated between getting angry and being considerate. He'd made strangely pointed comments that he'd never expanded on. It was like watching an out of focus movie that couldn't decide if it was telling a story about the past or the present and had compromised by superimposing both on top of each other: the ghost of Sam and the echo of Locus residing uneasily together in the same body.

Which was a fucking stupid analogy, he knew, because Sam and Locus weren't different people. They weren't alternate personalities. They were the same fucking person at two vastly different points in time. It was just that time wasn't behaving linearly anymore. It had turned into a muddy puddle and Felix was somehow drowning in the middle of it.

The familiar hiss of irritation made an appearance in Locus' voice. "I know. Things are different now. _I'm_ different. We may be able to try again."

Felix frowned, discarding most of that for the more important confirmation that the Locus on the other side of the door was unlike the one he was accustomed to dealing with back on Chorus. Because he knew about what Felix had done? Because Felix was dead? Because of the jackass on the other end of the conversation?

"I will not fall back on bad habits. You need not worry." That was less reassurance and more audible frustration. Audible to Felix, anyway. He doubted the other person could recognize how thin the ice had grown since they'd started talking. "I should go. I'll report in when I have more information about Alvaro's whereabouts."

There was a long silence. Then, Locus said more normally, "Yes. Thank you."

It was a tone with which Felix was intimately familiar. It was the _this conversation is over_ voice. It meant that Locus would be disconnecting the call now and the floor was wide open for the confrontation Felix wasn't sure he wanted to have anymore. He knew that he could turn around, go back to the guest room, and pretend he never heard any of this. Or at the very least, he could sleep on it tonight and confront Locus in the morning when he was of clearer, and less reactionary, mind. Right now his emotions were in a chaotic riot and he could very well do and say things he might later regret. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he let his emotions get the better of him and fuck everything up.

But where Locus was steady and calm, a stable rock in the middle of a tumultuous storm, Felix _was_ the storm. He was explosive and erratic, impetuous and difficult to control. A flicker of strong emotion could lead him to deviate from a carefully constructed plan as easily as a gentle breeze could ruffle his hair. When he was feeling overly complimentary about himself, he called it _charmingly spontaneous_. Hell, he said that sort of shit about himself even when he wasn’t feeling that way.

_Just let it go_ , he tried vainly to reason with himself. _Sleep on it. Think about it first._ But he was already twisting the doorknob and shoving the door open, giving the tiny voice of pragmatism little choice but to fade into silence.

Bursting through the doorway, Felix got inside the study just in time to see Locus look up sharply. Seated behind a large wooden desk, he’d been staring down at an array of papers scattered across the top of it. A mobile phone sat conspicuously near his hand. There was a lamp sitting atop the far corner, casting a warm glow over the mess, and a standing torchiere at the opposite end of the room. It gave the study, lined with shelves and a closed curtain window, a relatively cozy feel.

Felix wasn’t in the mood for _cozy_.

That Locus didn’t look surprised to see him just knocked his already turbulent emotions further off-kilter. Sick apprehension and bitter jealousy disappeared in a wild flare of fury. Because there was resignation on Locus’ scarred face; resignation and a weary kind of acceptance that said that while he might not have wanted this, some part of him was expecting it.

“That your new partner?” Felix snapped, stalking toward the desk.

“No,” Locus answered immediately, straightening up in his chair. There was something about the set of his shoulders that reminded Felix of those moments right before he charged into battle against overwhelming numbers. Like he was bracing for a disaster. “A…” The momentary stumble drew Felix up short before he’d gotten halfway across the room. “A friend. And an associate on this mission.”

That sounded an awful like _partner_ to Felix. “Anyone I know?” he asked flatly, meeting Locus’ grey-green eyes with his own.

Locus exhaled a little too noticeably. “Felix—”

Felix wouldn’t let him finish. The fury was like a wildfire now, roaring in his ears. “Why would your new buddy’s presence upset me, Locus?” he demanded, voice rising.

“Now isn’t the time for this.”

Even furious, Felix could read that for what it was: an attempt to calm him down. A desperate grab at redirection and distraction. He wasn’t having any of it.

“No?” His eyebrows rose. “When is the time?” He leaned forward, jabbing a finger in Locus’ direction. “Because you’ve been avoiding me since you brought me here. Every fucking time I ask a question, you give me some bullshit half-answer. You send me off to take a shower. You disappear at dinner.” His voice became a sneer. “You hide away in here like a fucking coward until I fall asleep and then try to have your little clandestine conversation when you think I won’t hear it.”

Felix took another step closer, sweeping his hand sharply to the side. “But I heard it, so cut the shit. Who was that? What don’t I know? What the fuck is going on?”

Through his tirade, Locus faced him without flinching. Neither his gaze nor his expression wavered. “Calm down.”

It was absolutely the wrong fucking thing to say. Felix exploded. “Don’t you tell me what to do!” he shouted at him, crossing the distance in what seemed like one swift step and slamming his hands down on the desk. “Tell me the truth!”

Rising quickly to his feet, Locus reached across the desk with a quelling hand. “Be careful. That’s surveillance—”

Without letting him finish, Felix grabbed a fistful of paper from underneath his hand, crinkled it into a ball with a viciously petty— _Fuck your precious work, I hope this is important_ —sense of satisfaction, and threw it squarely at Locus’ chest. “I don’t care about your fucking charity project, Locus. Answer my goddamn questions.”

Arm falling limply back to his side, Locus sighed. “There are better ways to have this conversation, Felix.”

“No shit,” Felix shot back sarcastically. “And you missed the opportunity for every one of them.” There were so many questions he could ask, so many things he wanted to know, but he could only demand one at a time. Through clenched teeth, he ground out the first one. “What don’t I know?”

He was breathing harder than he wanted to be. His heart was racing and there was an unpleasant tremor in the hand Felix was still using to point accusatorily at Locus. It was adrenaline, fury, and apprehension that caused it, but he still dropped it in disgust, not liking even that meager show of weakness.

For what felt like an eternity, Locus didn’t say anything. He stared at Felix, assessing and judging and who the fuck knew what else. The tension grew, so oppressive and taut that it felt like the air itself was going to snap from the strain.

“I could have saved you,” Locus said finally, speaking softly into the heavy silence. “My camouflage was active. I could have killed them all and extracted you safely. I did not.”

Felix drew in a sharp breath through his nose, momentarily overwhelmed by a hot-cold sense of... He wasn't sure. He couldn't have put a name to it if he'd been made to try. It left a queasy, sick feeling in his gut and a weird breathless kind of ache in his chest. It was a little like taking a punch to the face during an interrogation, but about a thousand times worse. Given the choice, he would have rather been being interrogated at the moment. At least then, he would have known what to expect.

He didn't know what to expect with Locus anymore. This was proof of that. He really was a stranger now.

Locus was silent for a while, possibly to let that sink in and possibly because he was waiting for a response. Felix didn't give him one. He just looked at him, _stared_ at him, a million words he wanted to say jammed in his throat and a creeping, staticky numbness preventing him from attempting to voice any of them.

Neither one of them moved. No one said anything. Felix stared at Locus and Locus stared right back at him. There were _things_ skittering like frightened animals across Locus' face, emotions or some facsimile of them that Felix really wasn't in the mood to try to define. It didn't matter what _Locus_ was feeling. The backstabbing son of a bitch had betrayed him. He'd let fucking _sim troopers_ kill him.

"You killed me," Felix finally said, and the sound of his voice was like nothing he'd ever heard before. It seemed to come from a million kilometers away, hollow and strange to his own ears. If the room hadn't been obviously empty save for the two of them, he would have thought there was a third person in there with them.

"No," Locus corrected him, still quiet, still with a bizarre note of something inexplicable tingeing his voice. "But I let it happen."

Felix ignored him. "You sided against me." He still sounded too far away. "You sided against me with the _sims_."

Locus shook his head. "I did not side with them. I sided with myself."

"What the fuck does that even mean?" There. That sounded more like him, sharp and angry and impatient.

For once, Locus gave him a straight answer. "I was tired of killing. I wanted to quit. You would not. And you would not listen to me."

"So you killed me?" snapped Felix in bitter disbelief. "You couldn't have put your little crisis of conscience off long enough to keep your fucking _partner_ alive?"

That prompted a glimmer of anger to surface in Locus' eyes. "Partners don't deceive each other for years."

It was like a slap in the face, open-handed and stinging. He could deny it. He could feign outrage at being mistrusted and redirect the conversation that way. But without knowing how the fuck Locus had found out, he couldn't chance the lie.

"Partners keep each other alive, though," he shot back. " _Partners_ watch each other's fucking backs. _Partners_ take bullets and beatings for each other. _Partners_ put their lives on the line all the fucking time for each other, regardless of how much shit they go through to do it."

The anger didn't disappear, but some of the severity in Locus' expression softened. "I know that."

Felix felt his lip curling in a snarl. "But it didn't fucking matter to you, did it? All those years. Everything we've been through. It meant fucking nothing."

"No, that isn't true. I—"

"You sold me out to the sims!" Felix shouted at him. "By your own admission you stood there and watched them kill me! Because I lied? You lie to people all the fucking time! But that's okay when you do it, isn't it?" The bitter sarcasm was practically dripping from his lips. "You can do whatever the fuck you want, but I've got to die because you found some new fucking friends."

A disgusted frown contorted Locus' mouth. "The sim troopers were not my friends."

_So you still have some standards_ , Felix thought angrily. _Big fucking deal. That doesn't make it better._ It could have, maybe it should have, but it didn’t. In a strange, twisty way, it actually made it worse.

Maybe it would have been better if Locus had befriended them. It still would have been a betrayal, but it would have been an understandable one. Ditching an ally for a better one was standard practice for mercenaries. No one excelled in the field with substandard equipment or associates. To make the most money, to be successful, and most importantly, to stay alive, one had to have the best. The sim troopers weren't the best. They weren't even close. The line of bullshit Felix had fed them upon first meeting them couldn't have been further from the truth: they were fuck ups and shitty soldiers, useful as cannon fodder and little else.

If Locus had considered them more useful than Felix it would have absolutely been an insult. Felix was stronger, faster, smarter, and a better marksman. To be replaced by a pack of idiots would have been beyond offensive. But he could have rationalized it somehow. In some situations, a group of inept soldiers could be more useful than a single skilled one. It would have been lazy and sloppy of Locus to replace him like that, but it could have made some modicum of sense. Instead, there was no logic in what he was saying.

In the middle of a fight, he decided he didn’t want to kill people anymore and had abandoned Felix to death just because Felix wasn’t willing to let the sim troopers kill him? Was that really the ration of shit Locus was trying to sell him? That he thought Felix might buy it, that he’d just nod along and agree that it had been the best decision he could have made, stoked the fires of his anger all over again.

“Oh, _excuse_ me,” Felix gasped, taking an exaggerated step backward and clutching his hand to his chest. “I’m _so_ fucking sorry. You let a bunch of fucking idiots you don’t even fucking _like_ kill me! That makes it so much better!”

Locus shook his head, the motion slow and deliberate. “No, Felix. It doesn’t make it better.”

It felt like he was going to explode. Literally explode. The mounting fury and frustration was going to get so uncontainable that it was going to burst out of him like a volcano. Or he was going to attack Locus in a wild fit of violence and tear his fucking face off with his bare hands. The seesawing inconsistency of Locus’ mood was driving him crazy. Felix could feel it as a pressure in his chest and see it as dimness at the edges of his vision.

One minute Locus was angry. The next he was the closest Felix had ever seen him get to regret. Like he was simultaneously glad for Felix’s death and sad about it. _Pick one_ , Felix thought viciously. _Fucking pick one. Because I’m not falling for this bullshit_.

“Then what do you want me to say?” Felix snarled, his voice a waspish hiss. “You want me to congratulate you? Absolve you of your sins?” He barked a hollow note of laughter. “You aren’t getting either from me.”

“That isn’t what I want.”

“Are you ever going to fucking tell me or is it just going to be a goddamn guessing game forever? Because I’m not playing that game, Locus. I won’t. So either you tell it to me straight up or I’m out of here.”

As he said it, Felix realized that it wasn’t as empty a threat as he thought it was going to be. He _would_ leave. Locus had betrayed him. _Would_ betray him. Felix made a low sound of frustration deep within his throat. It didn’t matter when it happened. What mattered was what it all meant. Locus wasn’t reliable anymore. He wasn’t trustworthy. Felix couldn’t trust a single thing he said or did anymore.

Earlier, his instincts had told him that much and he’d discounted them. He’d assumed it was because he was disoriented by the impossibility of being in the future and misinterpreting his emotions, jumping at shadows and seeing threats where they didn’t truly exist. But he’d been right. Locus wasn’t to be trusted. Locus was the _enemy._ Quite literally the enemy. He was a stranger masquerading as someone Felix used to know. Someone who had killed him once and had no reason not to do it again.

There was no reason to stay and every reason to get the hell out of there.

“I don’t know.” Locus lifted a hand in a gesture that on him looked almost beseeching. He didn’t do anything with it, just let it hover in the air slightly to the far side of his shoulder for a moment and then dropped it back to his side. “I never expected to see you again.”

“No fucking shit,” Felix muttered darkly under his breath. “That’s what happens when people die. They disappear.”

Locus scowled at him. “Stop putting words in my mouth. You want me to talk to you? Then _let_ me talk to you.”

Arguably, he had a point. Locus tended not to bother raising his voice to talk over other people. But that kind of logic belonged to another time, when emotions weren’t raging out of control and at least one of them hadn’t had his entire world yanked out from under his feet.

“Don’t you take an attitude with me,” Felix shot back angrily. “You don’t get to get pissy with me. You’re alive. I didn’t turn my back on you when you needed me!”

Like a candlewick catching flame, Locus’ face lit up with a sudden flash of anger. “You _used me_ when I needed you. I trusted you and you used it against me.” Gradually, like the inexorable slide of a glacier, Locus’ voice rose. “I don’t dispute your right to be angry, but don’t you dare ignore mine.”

Locus took a step forward around the desk, the motion sharp with the evidence of his tightly leashed control. Most people would probably be intimidated by it. Felix wasn’t. Aggression in Locus always called to his own and put his proverbial hackles up. When he refused to back down from a fight, it didn’t caution Felix into subsiding and letting the matter go. It encouraged him to attack.

“What I wanted back then is irrelevant,” he continued. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over. This—” He spread his arms out. “—is all there is. You’re here now. And where we go from here is much more important than where we went wrong in the past.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Yes, Felix had made some truly reprehensible choices in his life. But he’d always had Locus’ back. When it really mattered, when it was a difference between life and death, he had never let Locus down.

“Felix, for fuck’s sake!” The exclamation exploded out of Locus’ mouth in a heavy expulsion of breath. “Just let me—”

“Where are they?” Felix interrupted whatever placating piece of shit excuse Locus was going to give him.

“What?” Like he didn’t know what Felix was talking about.

“The sims,” Felix clarified. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

Felix didn’t believe that for a second. “You don’t know.”

“No, I don’t. I didn’t keep tabs on them after I left Chorus.”

That earned him a scoff. “ _You_ didn’t keep track of those dumbfucks after you left Chorus.”

"It's been four years!"

_Please_ , Felix thought irritably. _Like I'm stupid enough to believe that._ Locus was the most paranoid motherfucker Felix had ever met. Expecting him not to keep track of a potential enemy was like expecting rain to fall upwards and seas to be made of cotton candy.

Of course, if they weren't enemies anymore, there was always the possibility that he really wasn’t...

"And you just, what?" Felix demanded skeptically. "Walked away? From everything? Just washed your hands of everything about Chorus and never looked back?"

"Yes."

He was lying. Locus was fucking lying. Felix could see it on his face. It might as well have been printed there in big flashing neon colors: _Liar! Liar! Liar!_ Either Locus thought he was a complete idiot, which he couldn't _quite_ believe, or in the years since Felix had been dead, he'd forgotten how well he could read him. There was a lie in there somewhere and Felix was damn well going to drag it out into the light.

It wasn't the sims. Locus' distaste at considering them his friends had been genuine. Hargrove? No, that didn't seem right. If Locus abandoned the mission, he wouldn't have kept an eye on their former employer. The pirates? None of them had been overly friendly with Locus and they'd been around before Chorus. Certainly not the Chorusans themselves. Locus' contempt for them had been unquestionable. So what the fuck was he forgetting?

The memory of _something_ hovered just out of reach, like a word on the tip of his tongue that he couldn't remember. It itched at his mind. _Chorus, Hargrove, the sims, Kimball, Doyle, Tucker, pirates_ —

And then he had it. Christ, how could he have been so stupid?

"What happened to Washington?"

"What?"

Locus was such shit at playing dumb. The fact that he was doing it meant that Felix was right. "Wash," he snapped. "Where is he?"

Locus didn't hesitate. "I don't know."

It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the truth either. Telling half-truths was a skill at which Felix excelled. He could say something completely false without ever telling an outright lie, and most of the time, people believed him. So it was easy to see the ploy for what it was: answering the question as literally as possible.

"Don't you?" Felix said it like a question, but it wasn't. Both his tone and his expression were too flat.

"I am not his keeper, Felix. He doesn't report to me."

That he had to lead Locus through this like a blind man across a busy street just made him angrier and he was already angry enough. Felix _hated_ Wash with a murderous rage that even surpassed how much he loathed Tucker. Tucker had only been a nuisance. Even after learning that Tucker was the one who had killed him, Felix hadn't upgraded him on his hit list. It was insulting, sure, but it didn't qualify him for the top spot as the person Felix wanted most to kill in horribly painful ways.

Agent Washington held that distinction. He'd never done anything to Felix directly except be an annoyingly cryptic asshole, but Felix hadn't been oblivious to Locus' increasing obsession with the guy. Then Locus had squirreled him off to the Federal Army's base under the pretext of furthering the civil war plan. To this day, Felix had no idea what had happened between them during that stint in fake captivity. He hadn't directly asked and Locus had never said. But the obsession hadn't diminished. If anything, it had grown until it was everything Felix had not to abandon the whole fucking mission and hunt the bastard down, slit his throat, and put an end to it.

Evidently, it had continued on after he was dead. Because Locus' indirect answer was clear enough. Wash wasn't past tense in the story of Locus' life.

Too calmly, Felix prompted, "But you kept track of him after you left Chorus."

He probably wanted to deny it, but Felix had backed him into the honesty corner. "We spoke after Chorus, yes." He paused, and something odd, almost uncomfortable, flashed across Locus' face. "He helped me with something."

"Let me guess, your humanity, right?" Felix sneered viciously at him. "Fucked it right back into you."

It wasn't anything more than a snide jab. Felix was being an asshole because he knew that he was right about the first part of it. Locus had been too much unlike himself during that whole awkward episode earlier in the evening. _Something_ had happened to change him from the emotionless killing machine he'd been when Felix last saw him to someone who would, however awkwardly, remember an off-hand comment about dinner, provide it to the best of his ability four years later, and then think about Felix's comfort enough to fetch a blanket after he'd fallen asleep on the couch. Just his fucking luck that that something was Wash.

But the jab struck home a little too hard. Locus flinched. It wasn't obvious or exaggerated. It was merely a brief tightening at the corners of his eyes. But Felix had been glaring at him so furiously that he hadn't missed it.

"Felix..." Locus' voice was calm and slightly exasperated, like Felix had said something unimaginably dumb. But it didn't erase what he'd seen.

A sudden plummet down through the floor to the ground couldn’t have made his stomach lurch harder than it did just then.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Felix told him quietly, utterly devoid of emotion.

“That isn’t—” Locus began.

He didn’t have a chance to finish. “Tell me you didn’t fuck him,” burst harshly out of Felix’s mouth, sharp as a razorblade.

Locus took such a deep breath in through his nose that his shoulders visibly shook. He didn’t glance away from Felix’s furious gaze. From another man, that could have been interpreted as a measure of respect. From Locus, it was as insulting as if he’d started gloating about it. Because Felix knew that Locus didn’t give enough of a shit to feel the compulsion to look away. He wasn’t fighting to maintain eye contact out of decency. He was doing it because he didn’t feel things like shame or guilt or discomfort.

Especially not where Felix was concerned.

“Yeah,” Felix said bitterly, exhaling a breath that sounded like a brittle crackle of laughter. “That’s what I thought.” Locus’ lips were compressed so tightly into a thin line that it looked like they were going a bit pale around the edges. Felix bared his teeth like a savage animal. “What’s it like to kill your partner for a piece of ass?”

“I didn’t—”

“Oh, spare me your pathetic excuses.”

Suddenly, it was too much. Talking to him. Being in the same room with him. The future. The knowledge that he was dead. The fact that he was alone in a way he’d never been before. All of it. With a hiss, Felix twisted around and stalked toward the door.

Behind him, Locus tried again. “That isn’t—”

Felix spun around so fast he made himself dizzy. “Don’t you say it,” he snarled at him. “I mean it.” He pointed a finger at him. “If the next fucking word out of your lying mouth is _fair_ I’m going to put a bullet between your eyes.”

As he fell silent, he realized that he was breathing far too heavily. He hadn’t even been shouting, but his chest was heaving and it felt like no matter how fast he sucked in air, it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t breathe. It was like his chest was caving in. Like some great weight was slowly crushing him and suffocating him inside his own body.

He needed out. He needed out right the fuck now.

And Locus needed to shut the fuck up. “We weren’t—”

“No,” Felix shouted, shaking his head. “You know what? Go to hell. I’m not listening to this anymore.”

Twisting back toward the doorway, he strode briskly toward it. Behind him, Locus called his name, but Felix didn’t turn. He didn’t even slow down.

_That’s it_ , he was thinking, heading blindly through the wide-open living space toward the guest room that had been his for such a short period of time. _That’s it. I’m done. I’m so fucking done. I can’t do this anymore._

Storming inside, Felix cast around for something to shove his meager little pile of belongings into. It was an action driven more by instinct than rationality, because he knew there wasn’t a convenient duffle bag sitting on the foot of the bed, waiting to be filled with his stuff. And even if there had been, it wasn’t like he could stuff the armor into it and carry it out of the penthouse in a flurry of righteous indignation. There was too much of it and it was too heavy. The only way to take it with him was to put it on and the process of getting into it took too goddamn long. He was going to have to leave it.

Decision made lightning-fast, Felix moved to the bed and the clothes on top of it. He plucked the jacket from the pile and slipped it on. Even in a fury, his survival training remained clear in his mind: always dress in layers for an environment of unknown temperature. Might start off too warm, but it was easier to take shit off and get cooler than it was to find stuff to put on if it was freezing. Having been in temperature-regulated armor for the short time he’d been outside, he had no idea which season this part of the planet was currently going through. Forgoing socks, he stuffed his feet into the pair of boots—better traction, better protection from the elements—and tucked his knife into the waistband of his pants, right there against the small of his back.

The magnum went into one pocket of the jacket and a handful of clips went into the other. He wanted to take the rifle too, but the jacket cut off at the waist. Without a stylish trenchcoat to nonchalantly tuck it into, there was simply no way he would be able to move a rifle through the streets of a city on Gilgamesh without attracting attention. It would have to stay behind with the armor and the incendiaries he’d collected. So would the available changes of clothing. It pained Felix not to take it all, but when his options were to go or remain with his stuff, there was really only one reasonable choice. 

Straightening, Felix caught sight of the unwelcome bulk of Locus’ body taking up most of the empty space of the doorway. He hadn’t heard him following him and he had no idea why he’d bothered. Locus was looking into the room with a frown of noticeable confusion, like he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was seeing. Felix wasn’t feeling charitable enough to enlighten him.

“Get out of my way,” he snapped, setting his gaze on something in the distance just over Locus’ shoulder and refusing to meet his eyes.

Locus didn’t budge. Instead, he caught Felix’s wrist as he tried to shove past him. “Felix—”

No sooner had he closed his fingers around Felix’s wrist than Felix yanked the magnum from his pocket with his free hand and pointed it directly at Locus, aiming for the center of his face, right at the point where the scars intersected on the bridge of his nose. This close, the muzzle was mere centimeters from his skin.

Finger sliding over the trigger, Felix flicked a glance at Locus’ eyes. “Let go. And move. _Now._ ”

Just like he was ignoring the gun in his face, Locus ignored the orders. His fingers remained clasped like the most annoying of shackles around Felix’s wrist and he continued to impede his forward progress. “If you would just—”

“I will shoot you,” Felix warned him in a voice as quiet as it was deadly. He wasn’t bluffing. Regardless of how much Locus had forgotten about his mannerisms over the years, that should have been blatantly obvious. His eyes were narrowed with purpose and there wasn’t the slightest quiver of nerves or indecision to his hand. One way or another, Locus was getting out of his way, and if that had to be achieved by stepping over his lifeless body as it poured its blood out onto the floor, so be it. Felix might have been the one to die on Chorus, but Locus was just as dead to him now. “ _Move._ ”

He wasn’t going to say it again. Finger tightening infinitesimally on the trigger, he stepped forward. And Locus, showing the first glimmer of wisdom he had all fucking night, released him and slid backward out of the way.

Felix kept the gun trained on him the whole way through the doorway. Once he was free of the guest room, he turned sideways and edged swiftly toward the exit of the penthouse. The gun remained raised, aimed and ready to fire, but Locus didn’t move to follow him. He watched him, though, an unidentifiable expression on his face. Felix didn’t try to decipher it. It didn’t matter how Locus felt. _Locus_ didn’t matter. Not anymore.

At the door, he grabbed the knob, wrenched it open, and swept through. He didn’t pause to deliver one last backward glance at his former partner. He didn’t take a moment to gather himself and consider his next move once the door had closed between them. Felix just hurried down the hallway, called the elevator, and when the doors immediately slid open, went in and hit the button for the ground floor. Planning for something beforehand had never been his forte. He _could_ do it, but his premade plans tended to get abandoned in the heat of the moment more than they didn’t. For someone who lived in the moment as much as Felix did, it wasn’t worth the bother. It was better to act and see what shook out.

The next two hours were a blur of lights and shadows. Cities on Gilgamesh never slept, but there were places that were more sparsely populated in the middle of the night than others. Felix headed to those first, abandoning the glow of neon lights and streetlamps for dark alleys and empty parking lots. All too soon, he found a mark—the sort of tough guy who thought he was badass enough to take a shortcut on his way home from a take and make it back in one piece. One knife between the ribs and a brief detour to hide the body later, Felix found himself in possession of enough credits to make life a little more comfortable for next few days.

He found a room in a seedy hotel on the outskirts of the city, as far from Locus’ building as he could get with limited funds and no transportation. It was the kind of place he’d always been vocal about despising whenever a job required them to stay in less than luxurious conditions, one of countless other dingy little places like it. The amenities were shit, the interior of the rooms were worse, but the anonymity was the best money could buy.

Not that Felix believed there was much of a chance that Locus would be trying to locate him. There was no reason to do that. Locus didn’t give a shit about him. If he was doing anything, it was probably contacting Wash to make sure that he was aware that Felix knew what had happened between them and was in the wind. And Felix eventually _would_ track down the fucking Freelancer and gut him the way he deserved to be. Because by now, Felix strongly suspected that Wash was the person he’d overheard Locus speaking with. No one else knew who he was _and_ would be able to provoke Felix into a violent rage simply by showing up. But for the moment, Felix was more concerned with securing his own survival than shuffling Wash off of his mortal coil.

And as much as he didn’t like it, being dead could probably come in handy for him. None of his enemies—save two at present—knew he was alive. Until word got out, it was like he had a free pass to do whatever the hell he wanted, because no one was going to start looking to pin shit to a dead man. If he played his cards right, he could be off of Gilgamesh in no time and well on his way to meting out his revenge.

That was the one positive aspect of Locus’ betrayal. The anger had burned away all traces of Felix’s hopelessness. He no longer felt lost and overwhelmed by his predicament. He was angry. No, scratch that. He was _furious_. Where and when he was no longer mattered as much as getting even. At the sims. At the remaining Freelancers. At Locus. At life itself. He didn’t know how he was going to accomplish it yet, but for what had been done to him, he would burn everything to the fucking ground.

Of course, before he could get started, he needed to acquire the right tools. The first of those tools was knowledge. He needed to know what happened on Chorus and how the galaxy had changed in the years he’d missed. He needed to know where his enemies were now and what they were doing. And maybe he’d find out more about this Alvaro guy and his special weapon. There was no better way to get back at Locus than to ruin his op. Maybe steal the weapon for himself. Maybe even use it on Wash, for some real poetic justice.

It would serve the motherfucker right.

After Felix had canvassed the motel room for bugs—of both the living and technological kind, one could never be too careful on Gilgamesh—and taken note of potential entrances, exits, and improvisational weaponry, he drew the curtains, double-checked the lock, and turned in for the remainder of the night. There wasn’t much of it left, but he’d never had a problem sleeping during the day and what little sleep he’d gotten on the couch hadn’t made a dent in his exhaustion. With his thoughts still in a chaotic whirl, he expected to have a bit of trouble nodding off, but he no sooner stretched out on the lumpy mattress than he fell asleep.

He awoke shortly after noon the next day and despite not having a change of clothes, he hauled himself out of the bed and into the shower. Down here on the shabby end of town, the water pressure was shit and the temperature kept switching from scalding hot to icy cold. He endured it without harkening back to the fantastic shower he’d had the night before, refusing to think kindly of anything associated with Locus, and hurried through it. Putting on clothes he’d already worn hurled getting new clothes to the top of his to-do list and when he left the room that was exactly what he did.

Two shopping bags full of clothes and personal hygiene items, a laptop, a late lunch, and a brief stop at the nearest casino to replenish his funds through some judicious card-counting later, Felix returned to the motel and settled in for a history lesson. The motel’s connection to the internet was surprisingly good and all of the news sites that Felix was accustomed to frequenting still existed. It was a small mercy, because a lot had fucking happened in less than half a decade and knowing his way around the sites made it so much easier to sort through the volume of information.

Most of the news was irrelevant, either because it was superficial and stupid or because it involved parts of the galaxy that were too far removed to affect him. Felix skimmed the highlights of the rest of it and came to a few general conclusions about the future. Ultimately, that it wasn’t as bad off as it could be. The Covenant hadn’t reformed. The peace, such as it was, continued. Humanity wasn’t teetering on the edge of extinction. There were no major wars currently being waged. The Insurrectionists were still a problem, but that wasn’t surprising. The UNSC was still the major source of military power in the galaxy. The Spartan program hadn’t been decommissioned and John-0117 was still the heroic face of the Great War.

_The more things change, the more they stay the same,_ Felix thought moodily. _What a fucking cliche._

And of course, there was Chorus.

The little planet that couldn’t wasn’t still in the news. Nothing was happening there anymore that warranted galactic interest or scrutiny. But three years ago, Chorus had been all anyone was talking about. The majority of information Felix found was intel he already knew: the history of the planet and the civil war. There was also quite a lot on Malcolm Hargrove, Charon Industries, his involvement with the UNSC Oversight Sub-Committee, and his fall from grace after his involvement in the Chorus “tragedy” had been discovered.

Hargrove, as the CEO of a massively influential company and chairman of a military committee, took the blame for all of it. He was painted as a megalomaniacal villain whose greed and sly, subversive behavior led him to almost successfully eradicate a whole planet’s human population for nothing more important than discarded alien tech. Alien tech which, Felix was cynically certain, had been scooped up as _evidence_ in the ensuing investigation by the military and was probably even now being used to murder less desirable human insurgents.

There was also a rather large amount of publicity surrounding the sim troopers and the remaining Freelancers. Already popular for their part in exposing to the public what Project Freelancer had been doing and summarily destroying it, they were once more painted as the heroes of the hour. To hear a few media outlets tell it, the handful of idiots had single-handedly driven back an invading army of mercenaries, pirates, and privateers. Most, however, were more equitable in awarding their accolades and included Kimball and the Chorusan soldiers.

Of Felix and Locus specifically, there were no direct mentions. A few of the sim troopers—Tucker, Grif, Donut, and Caboose—had talked about killing “one of the mercenaries” in a few different interviews, but there were never any names given. Discretion wasn’t a word in their vocabulary, which made Felix wonder why they failed to name names. He would have expected Tucker, at least, to boast about what he’d done to anyone with a pretty face. It was possible that fear of Locus kept them silent: knowing he was out there somewhere, invisible and deadly, and not likely to take kindly to being shittalked. But these _were_ sim troopers. That level of insight, logic, and common sense seemed a little too much to expect from them.

Whatever the case, he could find no trace of a Felix or Locus anywhere in the news out of Chorus. Wanting to be thorough, he searched their real names. Former UNSC soldiers running a genocide operation for someone on the Oversight Sub-Committee would probably be pretty big news, but there again, he came up blank.

He was a ghost now. A real ghost. Undocumented and dead. It was as liberating as it was daunting. He could be anyone now. He just didn’t know who he wanted to be.

Felix’s research took up the rest of the day and a significant portion of the night. Unwilling to let it all go to waste, he took another shower, put on one of his new suits, and ventured back out into the city. He went to an unremarkable bar first, only a half-step up from a dive, and nursed a beer there for about an hour, pretending to watch one of the large screens showing some sports game he really didn’t give a damn about. In actuality, he was listening to the conversations of the people around him. The more intoxicated the drinkers became, the more easily their thoughts flowed unimpeded out of their mouths. That was when Felix learned of a high stakes game going on in the back room of a joint three streets over, and after finishing off his beer, he made his way there.

The sharp suit and some smooth talking got him in and liberally spreading around credits netted him the kind of jackpot he never would have gotten during one night at a casino. He stayed for a few more games, let the guys win back an inconsequential amount of their money to assuage their bruised pride and wounded wallets, and then took his leave with the rumors of a couple interesting contacts he might make in the neighboring cities fresh in his ears. Not bad, he decided, for half a night’s work.

The next morning, he went out to pick up a suitcase, then came back, packed up his shit, and checked out of the motel room. Hiring a taxi to take him to the closest city might not have been the most cost effective decision he could have made, but it left the most unnoticeable trail compared to renting or stealing a car.

He spent two days there, staying in another crappy motel while he adjusted his wardrobe to his liking, amassed more money through largely inoffensive and untraceable means, and did a bit more research. It seemed like a waste not to take advantage of Gilgamesh’s more enjoyable pursuits and actually enjoy himself for a night, but Felix wasn’t as irresponsible as Locus had always like to bitch that he was. Things needed done and there was no one to do it but him. Later, he promised himself, once his contacts were made and his plans finalized, he would take a night off. Then he would get the hell off the planet.

Once or twice, the temptation to return to Locus’ building and smuggle out his armor crossed his mind. He _could_ do it, especially if he surveilled the place for a day or two to learn Locus’ movements, but he knew he was motivated less by an attachment to the armor and more out of spite, because it was _his_ and he didn’t like the idea of the bastard breaking it down for parts or selling it or whatever use he might get out of it. However, the last thing Felix wanted to deal with right now was another confrontation with Locus. And it was just armor. He could always get more if he really wanted it. Better armor, that wasn’t mired in shit from the past.

It wasn’t necessary to pack up and move on to another city, but Felix did it anyway. This one was further away, almost halfway around the world, and he intended to stay there for about a week. He got in touch with a few contacts from the old days, his identity concealed by fake accounts and names and piecemeal information that could be put together by enterprising hackers to construct the profile of a relatively harmless accounting guy that Felix had made up on his flight there. Through a friend of a friend of a guy someone’s sister’s cousin’s brother-in-law knew, Felix found a decommissioned, yet still space-ready Pelican for sale. It took him three days to round up the funds to buy it, but he managed to do it before some idiot USNC memorabilia aficionado scooped it up to add to a moldering collection. He also uncovered the location of the sim troopers, still stupidly traveling in a pack despite hating each other and somehow not yet dead through their own incompetence. The remaining Freelancers weren’t with them, but Carolina wasn’t important enough to Felix to waste time hunting down and he wanted to save Wash for second-last anyway.

He was just scheduling a meeting with an arms dealer for the following day when he heard the lock to his hotel room—he’d finally moved up to better accommodations—door turn over. Looking up sharply, Felix shoved the laptop off his lap onto the bed and reached for the gun lying on the bedside table as the door swung open. The room, while nice and moderately expensive, wasn’t huge. There were about ten meters between the bed and the doorway. Along one wall directly in front of him was a chest of drawers, the sliding door of a closet, and the flat paneled TV screen. Nothing useful there as a distraction against assailants. To the side were a small table and a set of chairs, arranged in front of sliding glass doors that led out onto a balcony.

Felix was gathering his strength to spring into action when Locus stepped into the room. The fact that it was him and not some gangster out to reclaim his boss’ lost money did absolutely nothing to dispel Felix’s sense of alarm. Cursing under his breath, Felix shoved off of the bed and darted for the balcony.

“Felix!” Locus called, already sounding pissed, as he came after him.

It would have been easier just to shoot the asshole and be done with it, but gunshots would attract attention and Felix wasn’t ready for that yet. He was so fucking close to getting off of Gilgamesh. He wasn’t going to let Locus fuck it up for him.

The sliding door took care of that.

Yanking on the handle, Felix discovered that it was still locked. And when he flicked the release mechanism back, nothing happened. The goddamn thing was jammed.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he hissed, cracking the butt of his gun against it in hopes of just breaking it. The delay was minor, but it was plenty of time for Locus to reach him.

Grabbing him by the shoulders, Locus jerked him around and shoved him up against the door. It rattled precariously in its track, but the glass thankfully held. Just as quickly, he grabbed Felix’s wrist and banged it against the doorframe hard enough that his fingers automatically released their hold. The gun dropped to the ground as Felix’s boot-clad foot slammed into Locus’ shin.

“Get your fucking hands off me,” Felix snarled in his face, drawing back his free hand to emphasize the demand with a punch.

Locus grabbed that wrist too and pinned him there against the door, his hands held harmlessly up near his shoulders. Felix struggled, but his leverage was shit and Locus was stronger. And he anticipated the knee to the groin before it even happened; kicking Felix’s leg out too wide before he could get the knee up and knocking him off balance, Locus put his own leg there in the way.

“Stop fighting me,” Locus told him firmly, squeezing his wrists until Felix hissed at him in discomfort.

“You broke into my room!” Felix snapped back, contorting his leg so that he could drive the heel of his foot into Locus’ ankle. The asshole didn’t budge.

“And you made me chase you across the planet.”

That comment was so bizarre that it momentarily distracted Felix from his ineffectual struggle against him and he frowned up at him, confused. “What the fuck are you even talking about? No I didn’t.”

He’d put distance between them, sure. He’d separated himself from Locus and whatever sphere of influence he had in that city. But that was merely an exercise in good sense. He hadn’t run in the hope that Locus would chase him. That would have been fucking stupid, not the least of which because Locus wouldn’t have done that. Why the fuck would he? And simply because he was saying it now didn’t make it any more believable.

“No?” Locus’ eyebrows rose. “What is all this then?”

The frown got deeper. “None of your fucking business.”

Locus leaned his weight into him a little harder. “What is wrong with you?”

“Wrong with _me_?” His voice rose sharply on the last word. “What the fuck is wrong with _you_?”

It was good that the line of questioning was rhetorical, because Locus didn’t answer him. “Why didn’t you come back?”

Nothing about any of this was funny, but Felix found himself laughing anyway. He couldn’t stop it from happening. It was too comical, like something out of one of those old comedy shows that used to be so popular on TV. Two people having two completely different conversations that never quite meshed or made any sense.

“You can’t be serious,” Felix scoffed at him after the laughter had faded. “You thought I was going to come back? Really? You chose the sims over me, Locus. I died and you were too busy fucking Wash to give a shit. Why in the _fuck_ would I want to come back?”

There was that skitter of emotion again, too many different things crossing his face too fast to name them all. One of them was exasperation, though. And another was frustration. Felix would have recognized those with his eyes closed. 

“That isn’t what happened,” Locus corrected him tightly. “I told you. Stop putting words in my mouth.”

Felix sneered at him. “What’s the matter? Too full of Wash’s dick for them to fit?”

Locus hit him so fast he didn’t see it coming. It didn’t register that he’d even let his wrist go until after the mind-numbing flare of pain had subsided, and by then, Felix’s arm was hanging limply at his side and the side of his face was throbbing. It hurt to smile at him, but Felix did it anyway, spitting the blood from his split lip directly onto Locus’ chest.

“ _Own it_ , Locus,” he hissed malevolently, jabbing a now freed finger into one of the spatters of blood on his shirt. “You got what you wanted.”

“No, I didn’t.” Locus was shaking out the hand he’d hit him with, but he was still looking at him and Felix saw the flicker of anger there. Anger and... something else. Something unpleasant. He didn’t know what it was. “I never wanted this.”

It wasn’t the first time Locus had said that, but even with more information and better context, it still didn’t make a lick of sense. “What the fuck did you expect was going to happen? Did you think the sims were going to let me live?”

“I don’t know.” Locus shook his head. “I wasn’t—”

Felix wasn’t done. He didn’t let Locus finish, just talked over him, firing out the questions like he was emptying the clip of a semi-automatic at a group of Sangheili. “Did you think you were going to tell me that you finally got into Wash’s pants and I was going to congratulate you?” He snorted. “Be happy for you?”

Now Locus looked offended. “I was never—”

Without the armor augmenting his strength or a proper foothold, Felix couldn’t put as much force as he wanted into the one-handed shove he delivered to Locus’ chest. But it was the act of dismissal that was satisfying more than the possibility of forcibly getting him to move back. That probably wouldn’t have happened even if he had both hands free and better leverage. Locus rarely moved unless he wanted to do so.

“Go back to your pet Freelancer, Locus.” Fury and betrayal made his voice sharp and icy. “We’re finished.”

“No,” came the stubborn denial. “We aren’t.”

It was some kind of fucked up irony. If Locus would have fought half this hard for him at any point in their lives, Felix might have never been desperate enough to manipulate him the way he had. And if he hadn’t done that, who knew how different their lives would have been. Maybe things wouldn’t have gotten so messed up. Maybe they would have never taken the Chorus job. Maybe this future would have never existed. So of course it was only now, when Locus had everything he wanted and Felix had finally had enough and was ready to let him go that he decided he wanted to hang on to something he didn’t even want.

“Oh, yes we are. You don’t get to keep me and your piece of ass on the side.”

Letting go of his wrist, Locus took hold of his shoulders and shook him. The door rattled in its frame and the back of Felix’s head bounced a little too hard against the glass, but it didn’t last beyond a few seconds and didn’t cause any real harm.

“That isn’t what this is,” Locus hissed at him through clenched teeth. “And you’d know that if you’d shut up for one fucking minute and let me finish.”

Except Felix didn’t want him to finish. He didn’t want to hear the excuses or the justifications. He just wanted to hunt Wash down and repeatedly slam the blade of his knife into his throat. “Oh no, I get it,” he disagreed, tone a mixture of sarcasm and disgust. “You want to impress your little boyfriend with your guilty conscience. Big hero Locus, wracked by guilt about being a backstabbing fuck.” His lip curled. “Well, forget it. This is _my_ life now. Not yours. Maybe you should’ve gotten more use out of my corpse while you had it.”

There it was again, that flash of strange fury in his eyes. This time, Felix was prepared for it. Locus struck out at him and Felix ducked the blow, sacrificing balance for the satisfaction of knocking Locus’ feet out from under him. They both went crashing down in a tangled heap, but Felix kicked himself free of the confusion, scrabbled up, and made a lunge for the door. Locus got his hand around his ankle at the same time and yanked, pulling him down hard enough that the air left his lungs in an explosive huff. 

He kicked out wildly with his other foot, hoping to catch Locus in the face, as he pushed himself to his hands and knees. The force of impact jolted up his leg at the same time Locus grunted softly. Not bothering to turn to see the damage, if any, his lucky hit caused, Felix got back to his feet and ran for the door. 

Locus caught the back of his shirt half a meter from the door and jerked him backward. Mid-motion, he changed direction and threw Felix against the wall. The force of it wasn’t enough to stun him. Felix pushed away from it, collided with Locus, and got himself pinned for the second time in as many minutes. Unlike before, his hands were free, but Locus now had his forearm across his throat and when he lifted a fist to hit at him, Locus just applied pressure until Felix couldn’t breathe and let his hand fall to his side.

Neither of them said anything. They were both breathing too hard to do more than spit bitten-off curses at each other anyway, and that kind of goading behavior had always been more Felix’s style. Locus didn’t lower himself to petty insults and at the moment, Felix didn’t think he was worth wasting the hard-won breath on. Their close proximity meant that Felix could feel the heat of Locus’ breath on his face every time he exhaled and that if he tilted his head just so, he would be able to go for his throat with his teeth.

It was tempting. It just wasn’t tempting enough to make him actually go through with it. Killing Wash wouldn't be half as satisfying if Locus wasn't alive to know he'd done it.

This wasn't the first time one of their arguments had come to physical blows. Back in the day, it used to be pretty common for a fight to escalate until they were trading punches and knocking each other around. More than one rented room had been wrecked due to one of them feeling quite strongly about a particular subject and letting the other know it. Violence was so deep in their blood that it was just another form of communication and they both reveled in it.

Locus never seemed to want to admit it, but Felix knew that going back and forth got his blood hot and racing. He could see it in his eyes, read it in the way he moved, and when the shouting and scuffling had inevitably melted into fucking just as rough and violent as the fighting, he had been able to _feel_ it in every cell of his body. Violence brought them both to life the way peace never had.

They were teetering on the edge of it now. Felix could sense it, like the charge in the atmosphere right before lightning struck. They'd been together too long, performed this dance far too many times, for his body not to recognize it. One tiny push, and it would be like nothing had changed. He wanted it. Christ, how he wanted it. But he couldn't make himself take the step to tip them over. There was a chasm between them that had existed for so long that he didn't know how to cross it and had been prevented from trying by a confusing tangle of hatred, disappointment, and pride. Now with the revelation about his death and Wash, there was betrayal too. But the longing was there, it always was, marrow deep and as raw as an open wound. Stubbornly, Felix ignored it, the whole idea too complicated and overwhelming for him know how to process even in the least turbulent of times.

Locus was searching his eyes for fuck only knew what and Felix glared defiantly back at him, chest heaving and fingers rhythmically clenching and releasing. One of them was going to have to give way here. Locus was going to have to back off or Felix was going to have to back down. But Locus never backed off. And like hell Felix was backing down from a traitor.

He threw himself forward, meaning to jar Locus' grip on him loose, but Locus was ready for it and slammed him back against the wall. He followed then, flattening himself against him, using his body weight as an additional means of restraint. Neither was wearing an abundance of layers; Felix could feel the solidness of his torso against his own, not gone even remotely soft over the disparity of years that separated them. He was warm too, more so than usual thanks to the physical exertion. There was a bead of sweat gathering just above his temple. Felix could see the swell of it from the corner of his eye.

_I hate you_ , Felix thought spitefully. _I fucking hate you._ It was true in so many ways, but a lie in all of the ones that actually mattered. A lie he'd been telling himself for so long that by this point, he felt too comfortable with it to abandon it. Deep down in those places within himself he rarely examined, he didn't believe it and he knew that he ever would, but it was familiar the way a worn old blanket was familiar. And it was just plain easier. More importantly, he could live with it. _Had_ been living with it and doing pretty fucking well for himself to boot.

There'd never been any way he could live with the truth. Felix had known that from the start and he'd always favored self-preservation over being honest with himself.

Emotion had clouded his heart and blinded his mind, but his body remained unhindered by such irrelevant things. His body recognized the way Locus felt pressed against it. His body remembered which steps to take and didn't give a good goddamn what his pride had to say about it. Which was why, as much as he didn’t want to admit it, Felix was getting hard, violence and sex so intertwined through the years that one tended to immediately follow the other. It had been habit once. Habit, and all of the things he absolutely refused to let himself acknowledge.

There was no possibility of hiding it from Locus. One shift and he'd feel it. Worse, he'd probably exacerbate the problem with the friction of that movement, and with the wall an unyielding presence behind him, Felix couldn't get any distance between them. Locus acted oblivious and stupid about so many things, but Felix knew that the reality couldn't be further from the truth. He was going to need a distraction and that meant swallowing a chunk of his pride now in order to salvage a larger part of it later.

It felt like his throat had to work around a rock lodged inside it, but he managed. "You want to talk," he growled, grabbing onto Locus' arm and trying to leverage him off. "Then get the fuck—"

Unwilling to be sensible about this and let him go, Locus shoved back, twisting against him to get his arm back where he'd had it. And froze.

_Fuck_.

Felix could see the instant when it clicked, when Locus realized that it wasn't just an awkward angle he'd caught him at but his dick hard against his thigh. It should have been marginally vindicating to recognize the pressure against his own hip was Locus' erection. It should have made him feel better to know that regardless of whatever bullshit was going on between him and Wash, Locus was still just as affected by Felix as Felix was by him. But it wasn't. It didn't.

It just pissed Felix off more than he already was.

And Locus knew it. He had to know it, had to see it in his face. Because he shifted his weight on his feet unnecessarily, rocking his thigh much too deliberately there in the space between his legs. And Felix, all too human regardless of how angry he was about everything, could do nothing but buck his hips into the motion and rub his cock against that solid muscle. Locus, damn him, watched him do it, his gaze sharp on Felix’s face as pleasure shot through him and shuttered his eyes.

This was such a fucking mistake. They were going to hate each other even more after this. Felix tried to remind himself of that, but his libido didn’t care and wasn’t listening. Because maybe it didn’t really matter. They hated each other enough already. What was a little more resentment?

Felix caught at Locus’ elbow, grasping it so tightly that he could feel his fingers digging into his skin despite the sleeve covering it. “Locus,” he started, unsure if he was trying to goad him into further action or warn him against it. The tone of his voice, a little too taut with a mixture of frustration and arousal, probably didn’t make it any clearer to Locus than it did to him. 

A quick fuck wasn’t going to change anything. Their problems weren’t going to evaporate as soon as they both got off. But lust was often stronger than sense, and mixed with the spiteful satisfaction of knowing that he was stealing Locus right out from under Wash’s nose, albeit temporarily, it was getting increasingly impossible to resist.

_He’ll always be mine,_ Felix thought viciously, as the pressure across his throat to keep him still became Locus’ hand sliding around the curve of his neck. _No matter what you do, you’ll never be able to get me out of his mind completely._ This was proof of that. Locus had the Freelancer, but he was here and some part of him obviously still wanted Felix. That would have to be revenge enough to tide him over until he could track Wash down and make it permanent.

There were still calluses on the pads of Locus’ fingers. Felix could feel them as they moved across the nape of his neck; the faint rasp prickling his skin in a way that only served to make him more aroused. Maybe this was the stupidest decision he’d ever made, but at the end of the day, Felix was just a man. One who hadn’t had sex in what felt like forever and had never been very good at denying himself the things he wanted.

Casting aside thoughts of the future, immediate and otherwise, Felix grabbed a fistful of Locus’ shirt in his free hand and tugged. At the same time, he rocked his hips in both permission and demand for it to continue. The years between them and crimes they’d committed against each other weren’t enough the obscure his meaning; Locus read it, took a firm grip on the back of his neck, and pulled him forward. Anticipating the kind of violent, fierce kiss that would haunt him in the nights to come, Felix closed his eyes and moved with it.

And then Locus fucking ruined it with one word, whispered hoarsely into the scant centimeters separating their mouths. “ _Isaac_.”

It was a name he hadn’t heard in years. Never truly forgotten, but so disconnected from the man he’d become that he barely remembered that it belonged to him. Hearing it now in Locus’ rough voice took him back to seedy motels with broken air conditioners and cheap sheets in piss-poor settlements on the fringes of the Outer Colonies, to greasy takeout dinners in waxy cardboard cartons and the smell of the particular brand of gun oil that Locus had always used to maintain his guns, regardless of where they were or how difficult it was to procure it. He remembered rumbling laughter, sharp smiles, and sharper kisses that left him breathless and aching.

Too much. It was too fucking much.

Felix recoiled so fast that the back of his head collided with the wall again. “ _No!_ ” he snapped sharply, opening his eyes and shoving at Locus’ chest as hard as he could.

Either it caught him by surprise or, more likely, he was demonstrating his cooperation, because Locus rocked backward half a step. It didn’t put much distance between them and his hand was still clasped against the back of Felix’s neck, but it was a start. There was a tiny pained frown contorting his mouth and if it had been there just because he’d gotten worked up and was annoyed that blue balls were in the forecast, Felix could have handled. But thanks to that fucking slip, he knew it wasn’t caused by sexual frustration.

There was no way in hell he was letting Locus do this to him. After years of hostility, he’d put their whole... whatever it was behind him. Not well. Not completely. Certainly not easily. But he’d reached a point where he was on tolerable terms with his life and the way things were with Locus. And now, after betraying him for Freelancer’s shitty simulation troopers, after letting him _die_ and fucking _Wash_ of all goddamn people, Felix would be damned if he was going let Locus get away with dredging up the past and using it against him like that.

Locus must have seen it on his face. He lifted his free hand in a quelling gesture as he began softly, “Don’t—”

“No,” Felix hissed, cutting him off. And because Locus still hadn’t released him, he brought his balled up fist down into the bend of his elbow. There wasn’t enough force behind it to do any damage, but the impact broke his hold, allowing Felix to push his arm away. “Get the fuck out. _Now_.”

“I—”

He didn’t want to hear it. “Don’t you ever come looking for me again,” he snarled over whatever protest Locus had been about to make, glaring furiously at him as he shoved at his chest again. “I mean it, Locus.” He chose the codename deliberately, driving home the point as sharply as he knew how. Sam and Isaac didn’t exist anymore and they sure as fuck weren’t going to be resurrected now. “I’ll kill you if you do.”

Making threats was something Felix did as easily as breathing, but this one wasn’t a bluff. If the gun had been within reach, he would have punctuated the demand with a bullet. Locus had to know that. He’d always been pretty adept at filtering through Felix’s bullshit to the truth buried inside it. But now he hesitated, that stupid frown more pronounced than ever.

Pointing a finger viciously toward the door, Felix met his eyes and said icily, “Go.”

For a few tense seconds, he thought he was going to have to make a play for the gun and forcibly remove him. But just as he began readying himself for it, Locus finally stepped away from him. He didn’t nod or say a word. He simply backed up, gave Felix one last indecipherable look that lasted too long, and left.

Felix didn’t move. The door didn’t reopen. Locus didn’t come back in. But he kept standing there glaring at the door, his breath coming too fast and his hands curled into fists so tight the nails were digging uncomfortably into his palms. The conflicting confusion of emotions had turned his mind to static, filling it with so much white noise that it completely drowned out his thoughts. Both a blessing and a curse, perhaps; although it served to keep him frustratingly stalled in the moment, it also prevented him from doing anything stupid.

Eventually, so gradually that he didn’t notice it happening, his breathing slowed to normal. A dry scratchiness intruded on his awareness, getting more annoying until he finally blinked a few times and it went away. Like a jump start to a faulty power supply, it brought him back to himself. His fingers felt numb and it took some effort to get them to loosen up and straighten out, but by then he was moving again.

First to the gun, which he picked up off the floor and shoved into his waistband. Then to his laptop. It was like he was moving on autopilot. He powered down the computer, shoved it into a suitcase, and began gathering his belongings. It was an automatic response to having his safe house invaded that had the unexpected benefit of keeping him too busy to really think about what just happened.

Within an hour’s time, he had vacated the hotel, located another halfway across the city, and was settling into a corner room with more exits than the previous one. He knew that the precaution wasn’t necessary. If Locus wanted to find him again, it was clear that he could. But it took the edge off of Felix’s paranoia and the change of scenery was a nice distraction from memories he didn’t want to revisit.

The bar in the lobby helped considerably too. Felix spent about twenty minutes in the room before thoughts of Locus and what had almost happened drove him out in search of a distraction. Three glasses of Scotch and some meaningless conversation with strangers later, he’d formed an insulating barrier between thoughts about Locus, the future, and his death and the rest of his mind. It was nice; a little slice of peace in the midst of the most fucked up disaster since Reach. And it got even nicer when a woman sat down next to him and started to flirt.

She was blonde, blue-eyed, and had skin even paler than Felix’s. Her fingernails were long and painted with some kind of iridescently shimmering lacquer that served no purpose whatsoever. The tight, low-cut red dress she was wearing left practically nothing to the imagination about her generous curves and her high-heeled shoes were completely impractical for doing anything other than standing around looking hot. Her voice was light and devoid of any kind of accent that might place her planet of origin. And after a few minutes trading small talk and flirtatious banter back and forth, it had become pretty clear that she wasn’t the sharpest tack in the box. She was, in every sense, the opposite of Locus and _that_ made her more attractive than her meticulously styled hair or fake tits ever could.

When she suggested they go back to his room, he didn’t hesitate to agree. Fucking someone who could never be mistaken for Locus even if he shut his eyes—she’d given him a name when they’d started talking, but since Felix didn’t care, he hadn’t bothered to remember it—was infinitely more appealing than spending the night fighting not to think about him before giving up and resentfully jerking off to memories he didn’t want to recall. It wasn’t the most magical night he ever experienced, but it did the job: he got off and he wasn’t thinking about Locus when it happened. Once it was over, he kicked whatever-her-name-was out and went to sleep.

The morning brought a low-grade hangover and a desperate need to shower with its too bright sunlight and cloudless sky, but Felix had woken up to worse collateral damage in his lifetime of avoidance. This was nothing. A shower, a change of clothes, and some breakfast helped make him feel less like he’d been thrown out of a Warthog and a busy day of making arrangements to get the fuck off of Gilagmesh ahead of him gave him ample opportunity not to think about his real problems.

_All in all_ , Felix thought later that evening as he caught a taxi to a backroom meeting with his arms dealer, _I’m doing all right._ He couldn’t claim that he’d gone the entire day without thinking about Locus or his predicament, but as soon as he’d caught himself doing it, he’d redirected his attention. Once that had meant a brief stop at a pub to have lunch and a beer. Two hours after that, he’d detoured into a shop to pick up a bunch of knives he didn’t need. At dinner he’d struck up a conversation with a group of people clustered around the bar.

Distractions couldn’t solve the problems, but they would delay them and at the moment, that was all Felix wanted. He knew that once he was off the planet, he would have whole days of nothing but empty space and hours of time that would undoubtedly be filled by obsessing over everything. But until then, he wanted to pretend that he had a little peace of mind.

_Maybe this whole future thing won’t be as bad as I thought._

* * *

_Motherfucking son of a bitch._ Even on a crowded street in the middle of the night, there was no mistaking the silhouette Felix glimpsed out of the corner of his eye. _What the fuck is he doing? Following me?_

Fast movements drew attention, especially if one was subject to surveillance. Casually, as if he hadn't noticed Locus' presence further on down the street, Felix stepped into the doorway of the noodle shop he'd been in the midst of passing. He didn't actually enter the establishment, just lingered there out of sight and peeked around the concealment of the doorway to see what the fuck the asshole was up to.

Locus didn't approach the restaurant. He reached the intersection about two blocks away, paused to check the signs above the traffic signals, then turned off onto the side street and disappeared from sight. When he didn't reappear after about five seconds, Felix surmised that one of two things had occurred: Locus knew he'd been spotted and was approaching from a different direction _or_ he was doing something else and was either unaware of Felix's presence or simply didn't care. Unquestionably, the best course of action would be to get moving and get on with his business. What Locus was or wasn’t doing wasn’t any concern of his and if he didn’t want to have to suffer through another encounter, he needed to go.

But when he slipped out of the doorway, he didn’t head in the direction of his hotel. It was like his feet had a mind of their own and despite the protests of his brain and his dignity, they were taking him down the block toward where he’d last seen Locus and turning off onto the street down which Locus had vanished. Try though he did to get them back under his control, they wouldn’t listen. It was such a pain in the ass.  

Felix wasn’t dressed for stealth and surveillance. He was wearing dark, albeit finely tailored, clothing and the coat he’d chosen for the evening offered freedom of movement without getting in the way, but he had nothing that could adequately cover his head or his face. Wearing sunglasses at night would have been suspicious, or pegged him as a tool and gotten him attention anyway, and without a better effort to disguise himself, Locus would recognize him instantly. Yet not even professional pride could overcome the bizarre cocktail of curiosity, spite, anger, and an uncomfortably dull aching sensation that he decided was betrayal that kept him trailing after his former partner.

It wasn’t a simple task. Locus had had a pretty large lead to begin with and Felix was trying to appear too casual to passersby to pick up the pace. Compounding the simple advantage of distance and speed was the fact that Locus knew precisely where he was going and Felix had no fucking clue. He couldn’t head him off or take a shortcut to catch up with him. And there were people _everywhere_. It was approaching one in the morning, a time when the majority of the population was typically indoors, but the streets were as crowded as if it was mid-day.

_Holiday?_ Felix wondered as he side-stepped another obnoxious obstacle in his path, this time in the guise of a fat man who was trying to juggle eating a sandwich and having a mobile phone conversation at the same time. He was tempted to do his civic duty and knife the fat bastard, thus saving the person on the other end of the line from the open-mouthed chewing that was probably detracting from the discussion, but he wasn’t feeling very charitable. Not toward others, anyway. He lifted the guy’s wallet for himself.

Checking the spoils of his petty theft would have to wait, however. Felix tucked the pilfered wallet into his jacket pocket, ducked into an alley, and cut across to the next street over. Locus hadn’t been on the previous one and Felix had been down that particular street earlier in the day. There weren’t any establishments that way that would interest him.

Half a block later, Felix caught a glimpse of a familiar ponytail and his slowly waning interest in this fool’s errand was reignited. Now that he was actively trying, it was easier to track him and he didn’t lose him again. Locus wasn’t behaving suspiciously or like he was aware that he was being followed. There was sense of purposee in the way he carried himself that told Felix that he was on a mission of some sort, though considering his mundane attire of jacket and jeans, it wasn’t a high priority one. It crossed Felix’s mind that maybe he was going to meet up with Wash, but he immediately shoved that possibility out of his mind. If that _was_ where he was going, he’d deal with it then. Dwelling on it before then would just end up taking his thoughts down paths he didn’t want to travel.

After twenty minutes and a growing paranoid suspicion that Locus knew he was being followed and was only fucking with him, the chase ended at a large dilapidated building near the river. In the dark, with signage that had been graffitied into incomprehensibility months ago, it was difficult for Felix to tell what it was. A warehouse? A factory? A gutted office building? Judging by the inconsistent glint of light reflecting from its walls, it was missing more than a few windows. There was a crooked, rusted metal fence that presumably surrounded the property, but it wasn’t keeping anyone out missing the gate. Inside the useless fence were hulking shapes that Felix eventually realized were cars and pieces of machinery.

_Not meeting Wash then,_ Felix decided after Locus had vanished into the shadows close to the building. _The mark? Alvin? Alvos?_ If he thought about it long enough, he knew he’d be able to remember the guy’s name but he didn’t see the point. It wasn’t his business or his job. Locus was obviously here doing something kind of raid or reconnaissance and Felix, curiosity sated, could now go back to his life and forget that he’d followed him out here like a fucking idiot.

Shoving his hands into his coat pockets, Felix turned away from the building and glanced up the street just in time to see headlights light up an empty parking lot a few blocks north of where he was standing. Instinct had him shrinking back into a dark alcove before he realized he was moving. There was no reason to believe that the car was going to come down this way or that there was anything nefarious about its appearance, but the hair at the nape of Felix’s neck was rising and his fingers were itching to grab the gun he’d concealed under his coat.

The street had been deserted when he’d followed Locus down it. The street prior to it and the one before that had been empty too. No cars. No pedestrians. No one milling about on the bad side of town in the wee hours of the morning. And now, suddenly, there was traffic.

Felix had survived ambushes, raids, and overwhelming numbers due to one very basic understanding of the universe. There was no such thing as coincidence. If it seemed like it might be, it absolutely wasn’t and it probably wasn’t beneficial to him either. Expect trouble, prepare for it, and survive it was one of the few plans he’d established over the years and it had served him well.

Predictably, the car turned down the street and drove past Felix’s hiding place a moment later. A second car was behind it. And a third. And a fourth. It wasn’t coincidence at all. Frowning, he turned and watched the cars drive through the gaping hole where a gate had once been and come to a stop in front of the entrance to the building. For a few seconds, their headlights illuminated the side of it, casting enough light for him to make out a largely undamaged sign that had once proudly proclaimed the building part of Zirkon Industries.

He’d never heard of it and didn’t know what had been made or produced in the place, but there was one thing he was almost completely certain about: Locus hadn’t been expecting company tonight. And he sure as hell hadn’t been expecting _armed_ company. Because when the car doors opened, men with rifles poured out. Thirty men, he counted, all of them dressed in dark colors and more than half wearing body armor.

Locus was fucked. Unless he had his camouflage and an arsenal hidden under his jacket, there was no way he was completing his objective and making it out of there.

_That’s what you get for killing me, you stupid son of a bitch,_ Felix thought viciously as he watched the men enter the building in tight, paramilitary-grade formation. _We could’ve wiped these fuckers out. But you picked_ him. _And where is he? Not here. Not here and you’re going to die because you went in without fucking backup like a goddamn idiot._

It wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying to kill Wash after Locus was dead. The whole point of killing him in the first place was robbing Locus of the man he’d chosen over Felix. Sure, gutting Wash was going to be a cathartic release of all of his built up frustration and anger, but bleeding him dry and then not getting to see Locus’ face when he tossed the bastard’s head at his feet was dissatisfying on such a visceral level that he already felt furious at getting robbed of the experience. It was already bad enough that he wouldn’t be able to watch these people gun Locus down.

Or could he?

About to depart and leave his traitorous douchebag of an ex-partner to his fate, Felix paused and shot another glance at the building. It was a big place. He was dressed in dark colors. He could sneak in, follow the troop of commandos or security guards or whatever the hell they were, and find a prime vantage to watch the fight. It sure beat going back to the hotel and trying to drink away everything he didn’t want to think about. According to Locus, he’d done nothing but watch when the simulation troopers had killed Felix. This was like poetic fucking justice.

Casting one last glance around the area to make sure there weren’t any guards lying in wait to spot him, Felix slunk through the shadows toward the entrance of the building. Slowly, knowing sudden movements could give him away even in the darkness, he took the gun out of his pocket. There was no safety to thumb off; he wasn’t an amateur, he didn’t procure guns with safeties. He had a few knives on him, but in the interest of leaving a hand free, he left them where they were.

The inside of the building wasn’t any brighter than the outside. If anything, it was darker without direct access to the ambient light from the city and the sky. Felix spared a few seconds to mourn his helmet, with its night vision, its thermal imaging, and above all, its motion tracker readout. He was going to have to do this the old-fashioned, low tech way and he wasn’t the least bit happy about it. Locus and the men who’d gone in after him had knowledge of the building’s interior and a decent lead. If he fumbled around blindly for too long, he was going to miss out on all of the fun.

As he inched his way over the smooth surface of the floor—Tile? Cement? Cheap linoleum?—Felix’s eyes adjusted a little better. Instead of nothing, he was beginning to make out shapes of a slightly lighter shade of black. And that, along with a considerable amount of dumb luck, kept him from walking headlong into the back of one of the commandos. Either the guy was a rookie or he’d been told there was only one hostile involved and had assumed that said hostile wouldn’t be able to double back on him once he’d cleared the entrance, because he wasn’t paying any attention to what was going on behind him.

Felix took advantage of that immediately. The instant he realized what he was seeing, he pulled out a knife, clamped his forearm over the guy’s mouth, and drove the blade into the base of his skull. His body jerked—even while dying the guy was trying to fight, which meant he wasn’t a completely incompetent moron—but Felix held on, muffling the gasping groan as best he could, and twisted the knife, scrambling more of his brain. He died a few seconds later, the body crumpling toward the ground. Felix let it happen, guiding it down so it didn’t make a lot of noise when it hit, and then absently wiped the knife off on the dead guy’s sleeve.

He’d intended just to defend himself, but now that he was crouching down next to the body, feeling around for any weapons he might want to pilfer, he discovered that the man was wearing some kind of visor. Curious, he plucked it from his face and put it on. Instantly, the darkness lit up with the familiar green light of night vision.

_Yes!_ Felix thought triumphantly, rising to his feet and taking his first real look at the interior. It looked like some kind of reception area. There was a desk with a tipped over chair behind it. In a corner were a couple armchairs, one leaking stuffing, and a table. It was a large, albeit sparse area and beyond the desk were double doors leading further inside. It was obvious where the rest of the team had gone.

Cracking open one of the doors, Felix peered through into a huge warehouse. Thanks to all the windows, it was significantly lighter in there, easing the visor’s workload and making the visual field it offered sharper and better detailed. Steel girders and beams criss-crossed the space, connecting the walkways that lined the walls. There were dozens of metal shelves, some empty and others loaded down with cargo crates. Of his quarry there was no sign, but the warehouse was huge. From where he was standing, he couldn’t see to the end of it.

Near the doors was a stairway leading up to one of the walkways. Knowing it would provide a better vantage, Felix slipped through the doors and slunk up. He had to be careful not to make any noise; the steps were made of some kind of metal and his new Balmorals just weren’t made for this kind of shit. But there weren’t any damning taps from his heels and the synthetic tread on the soles didn’t slide on the dusty, dirty surface. The railing that lined the walkway didn’t provide hardly any cover to speak of, but Felix still hunched down a bit to make himself a smaller target and moved forward.

Thankfully, even well-trained security forces on crime-ridden Gilgamesh tended to forget one of the cardinal rules of infiltrating a potentially hostile area: _look up_. Felix managed to get about a third of the way down the length of the warehouse before he spotted any of the guards and none of them noticed him. Because they were all on the ground floor and he didn’t have a silencer on his gun, he didn’t bother killing them. They weren’t looking in his direction anyway.

At about the two-thirds mark, he finally found the action. There were about twenty guys clustered in a circle around Locus, their guns and tactical flashlights trained directly on him. Locus stood in the center of the brilliant glow of the light, squinting against the glare, looking irritated and weaponless. A handgun was lying on the ground less than thirty centimeters from his foot. Still dangerous, but unarmed and outnumbered.

Felix would have expected shouting at least on the part of the leader of the guards, but he was speaking in calm, measured tones to Locus. The acoustics in the building were terrible; he could hear the sound of the guy’s voice but the words themselves were garbled. And the confrontation was going on in the center of the warehouse. Between it and Felix were almost two dozen meters of space, shelves, and derelict equipment. There weren’t any steps either, so it wasn’t like he could sneak down there and get closer.

Scowling, wanting a better look and to be able to actually hear what the fuck was going on, he began estimating the distance to the nearest shelving unit and the trajectory of the jump he’d have to make to land on top of it. He _could_ make it, that wasn’t the problem, he just knew he wasn’t going to be able to do it quietly. Which meant that things would get really fucking chaotic real fast and ruin everything. Plus, he didn’t want Locus to know that he was there.

It was as he was looking around in frustration that he realized that one of the support beams ran very close to where everyone was standing. So close that it was almost on top of them. There wouldn’t be any cover, but with all the attention focused on Locus, Felix was willing to bet that no one would notice him.

The beam was narrow, barely as wide as his foot, but Felix moved out onto it without concern for the ten meter drop below him. His steps were sure and steady, one after another in a slow, smooth gait that he hoped wouldn’t attract attention. It didn’t, and soon he was close enough that he could see and hear everything clearly.

“—who you’re working for,” the apparent leader of the armed men was demanding of Locus.

Despite the gun being waved in his face, Locus didn’t look impressed or alarmed. “No,” he said shortly, in the tone he used whenever he’d reached the end of his patience for repeating something. It was a tone Felix knew _quite_ well.

“Make it easier on yourself, man,” Head Honcho snapped in exasperation.

Locus shrugged. “You will kill me either way.” Pragmatic to the end.

“True,” Honcho agreed. “But there are dozens of ways to die and most of ‘em are plenty unpleasant.”

The angle didn’t allow Felix to see it, but from the tone of Locus’ voice, he knew he’d just rolled his eyes. “I’m aware.”

Honcho made a sound of disgust, then gestured toward Locus. “See if you can get anything out of him. Burn the body when you’re done.”

Locus didn’t so much as blink at that order. He didn’t flinch when three goons started toward him either. It took the sudden appearance of a knife embedding itself into the forehead of one of them before he reacted with a startled jerk and by that time, the leader was dropping to the ground from a bullet to the temple and another four of the men followed in rapid succession. The guards started shouting and twisting around to find the source of the attack and Locus, ever calm and collected in battle, lunged toward the discarded handgun, grabbed it, and darted for cover behind one of the shelving units.

It didn’t matter. They were already dead.

Felix dropped down from the beam, rolling out of the landing and coming up behind one of the guards. He grabbed him by the neck, jerked him around to use as a shield when one of his fellows took a shot, and put the shooter down with a round to the throat. Another single shot rang out— _Locus. That’s another one down._ —and Felix ducked behind the husk of a forklift to avoid the fire from two more guards.

_That’s twelve—No, eleven left. Nine more coming to help. Twenty to go_. He only had one clip and he’d already used six of the bullets. That meant six left and two knives. _Fuck it._ He wasn’t going to waste all of his bullets on these assholes. One of his kills had dropped an automatic rifle. He could use that.

A guard sprayed the front of the forklift with bullets. One buzzed past Felix’s ear a little too close for comfort. _Get moving_. Pushing off the concrete, he dove for the rifle, rolled over onto his back, and put those two down as well. _Nine._ Three sharp cracks from a semi-automatic handgun pierced the din. _Make that six._

Shouts and heavy footsteps announced the arrival of the rest of the guards as Felix got to his feet, rifle in hand. _Goddamn it. Fifteen. This really isn’t the time for fucking math._

Flattening himself against a shelf, he slunk toward the end and peered around the corner. He couldn’t see Locus. A guard moved into view a few heartbeats later, entered the rifle’s range, and Felix reacted immediately, shooting him in the head and booking it away from the spot before the body dropped so the noise couldn’t be used to locate him.

It was easier to kill them when there were more of them. As the herd got thinned, the remaining guards realized they weren’t dealing with amateur thieves and started playing it a little smarter. They hid. They stopped talking. They became more dangerous. But in the end, they were just mediocre hired guns. 

Locus took out about five of them while Felix was stalking one. Like some preternatural sixth sense, he could hear the sharper sound of Locus’ gun discharging regardless of what other commotion was filling the air. Once he’d dispensed with his target—snapped neck—it knocked his running tally of hostiles down to eight. When his path took him past the kill that had started this little clusterfuck, he bent down, yanked his knife free of the guy’s head, and then sent it into the throat of another asshole trying to sneak up on him.

After that, the bodies seemed to drop like flies. Felix hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Locus after the fighting started, but after coming around the corner of a pile of haphazardly stacked crates, he found him in the middle of a fight with two guards, now wearing one of the same night vision visors. The last two guards, if Felix’s math was accurate. He brought up his gun to put an end to it, but Locus beat him to it.

Jamming his gun under one of the guard’s chins, Locus blasted out the back of his head. He shoved the body away, directly into the last guard’s path. It tripped the guy up, causing him to stumble. Locus slammed an elbow into his back, driving him to the ground, and stamped down on his neck before he could rise. In the growing quiet, the snap of the guy’s neck seemed to echo louder than most of the gunshots had.

They were both breathing heavily. Felix had spatters of blood all over his clothes and Locus wasn’t much cleaner. Most of his hair had escape from the tail he’d tied it back in and was hanging around his face in wild tangles. The sight of it brought back memories that Felix didn’t want to entertain. He was getting set to melt into the shadows and get the fuck out of Dodge, not knowing if Locus had figured out who’d been helping him and not caring, but Locus looked his way just as he started to take a step backward.

Felix snapped the gun up, pointing it at Locus on spite-filled instinct. Locus didn’t do the same. He just looked at him for a moment that stretched out so long that it put Felix’s teeth on edge.

“What are you doing here?” he finally asked quietly.

_Fuck you_ , Felix thought obstinately. He didn’t want to answer him and not just because he thought Locus was a fucking douchebag who didn’t deserve one. He had no idea how to explain what the hell had just happened.

“Curiosity got the better of me, I guess,” he replied mulishly, grudgingly giving him that much. But he didn’t lower the gun.

“Why did you help me?” Locus looked confused more than anything else.

“Reflex,” Felix spat out. And on faint reflection, it probably wasn’t far from the truth. It _had_ been a reflex. He’d been crouched there, enjoying the show, but when the guard leader had signaled to his men to start torturing Locus for information, something inside him had snapped. He’d thrown that knife without being aware that he was doing it and he’d barely registered shooting all those men either.

“I thought it’d be poetic to stand there and watch you die,” he continued with a snide, sarcastic edge. “But I guess I screwed it up.”

Now that the adrenaline was wearing off and no one was trying to kill him, Felix was thinking, and worse, _feeling_ , again. And he wasn’t happy with himself _at all_. Locus fucking abandoned him to the sims and what did he do? Jump in and rescue his ass the second he was up shit creek like a goddamn doormat with no self-respect.

“Thank you,” Locus said, cutting into his scathing assessment of himself.

The last person he wanted thanks from was Locus. “Why didn’t your fucking partner come along on this job?” he demanded, not actually caring about Wash’s current status but wanting to redirect the conversation.

And there was another thing. Why the fuck was he hanging around having a conversation with the bastard in the first place? All it would take would be to turn around and walk away. It was easy. He walked places all the time. He could just walk right the fuck out of the warehouse and Locus’ life and never look back. Maybe scrabble together a smidgen of his lost dignity. But he wasn’t leaving. He was just standing there, still facing Locus like he gave a damn about what he had to say.

He really, _really_ didn’t.

Locus didn’t rise to the bait. His only response was a simple, “I don’t have one.”

Felix rolled his eyes. “No? I thought good old Wash—”

“He isn’t you,” Locus cut him off, throwing out that declaration of the fucking obvious like a plasma grenade.

If there was a pithy retort to that, Felix couldn’t find it. _No fucking shit_ came close, but when he tried to say it, nothing happened. It was like there was some disconnect between his brain and his mouth and attempting to reestablish it just rerouted everything to his stomach and gave him heartburn for his trouble. Literally heartburn. There was an uncomfortable tightness in his chest that made him want to shift around until the muscles loosened up and stopped trying to constrict him to death.

Locus wasn’t saying anything either. After dropping that bomb, he just stood there and stared at Felix with some kind of expression he couldn’t place. It wasn’t annoyance or irritation. It wasn’t anger or disappointment. But his mouth was tight, his brows were low, and there was a squint to his eyes that _should_ have been any one of those things. It was both familiar and alien, which only served to make Felix more irritated with everything.

_Time to go_ , he told himself. _Seriously. It’s time to go now. Turn around, walk away, and get the fuck off of this planet. Start over. Don’t. But get the fuck away from him. Don’t do this to yourself anymore. You know how it ends now._ Felix shook his head, uncertain whether he was shaking it in denial at the truth he was trying to make himself see or at Locus or the whole fucking situation.

How Locus interpreted the gesture he didn’t know, but it obviously wasn’t in any way Felix meant it, because he said abruptly, “I could hire you.”

Postponing the argument with himself for a later, more private date, Felix stared at him. “What?” Had he heard that right? This time, the sharp headshake was directed at Locus. “No.”

“I have a lot of money,” Locus countered, taking a step closer.

Scowling, Felix jabbed a finger at him. “You let me die!” It shouldn’t have required reminding, but Locus was getting senile and fucking retarded in his old, Wash-fucking age. “Money can’t buy protection after that." 

It was Locus’ turn to shake his head. “I’m not trying to buy forgiveness,” he returned matter-of-factly. “I need help.” Eyebrows rising, he gestured toward the carnage around them. “Clearly.” His attention settled back onto Felix. “You’re the best.”

Locus didn’t do flattery. Felix knew that. He’d spent so many years trying to coax compliments out of him that it had practically become a hobby. That was merely Locus making an observation and attempting to gather the best tools for the job. It wasn’t personal. Business was never personal anymore.

Still, it _was_ nice to hear Locus acknowledge that he was a better partner than Wash. Even if it did make his relationship with the son of a bitch that much more insulting. _Fuck him all you want, you piece of shit. I’ll always be better than you and he knows it._

“One million credits,” Locus said after a moment’s silence. “Deposited to the account of your choice. You can take it and go and I won’t follow you.”

_That’s what you’re worth. A million fucking credits._ Years ago, that figure would have made him preen with smug satisfaction. Now, it made him feel sick. _But it would make starting over easier_ , the pragmatic part of him pointed out. _You could go anywhere. It’s not going to get any better than this. Take the fucking deal. You’ve done worse for yourself for less._

He couldn’t argue with that. As far as dignity and self-respect went, he didn’t have much these days. So what if Locus was using him? He could use him right back. And when the job was over, he could take his blood money and never have to see his fucking face again. It was better than struggling.

“Fine,” Felix hissed, then added sarcastically, “For old time’s sake.” His tone hardened. “One last job. When it’s done, you go your way and I’ll go mine. And if we never see each other again, it’ll be too fucking soon.”


	3. Three

To say that things were awkward might very well have been the understatement of the century. Blowing up the warehouse went all right. As it turned out, Alvaro—Locus said his name so many times that even with Felix actively trying to tune him out, he ended up remembering it—had been secretly storing some parts for his genocide weapons in the dilapidated dump and Locus had gone down there like the idiotic savior of the people he was trying to be to destroy it. The two of them had been blowing shit up for so many years that even with everything fucked between them now, they fell easily into familiar patterns. Within half an hour, the wreckage was a smoldering ruin and they were far away from the scene. 

It was what came afterward that was awkward to the point that even Felix, who could have probably won an interstellar award for his ability to ignore and avoid dealing with his problems, if such a thing had existed, noticed.

They’d gone their separate ways that night with an agreement, grudgingly given on Felix’s part, to meet the next day to fly back to Locus’ penthouse. Not wanting to leave a traceable trail for any of Alvaro’s more enterprising associates, he’d brought the cloaked Pelican instead of flying commercial the way Felix had. As much as he didn’t want to spend any time in close quarters with Locus, Felix knew that it would be stupid and inconvenient to accept the job and then stay on the opposite side of the world. Professionalism, for once, won out over being petty.

On his way back to his hotel, Felix had stopped at one of those all-night disreputable places that asked no questions and took no notice of the bloodstains on his clothes and picked up a portable music player. If he was going to have to stomach a flight with Locus, even one where he spent the entirety of it as far away from the cockpit as the Pelican allowed, he was going to make damn sure he didn’t have to listen to him. At the hotel, he took a shower, disabled the smoke detector and burned his ruined clothes, packed the rest of his belongings, and eschewed the possibility of having one last fuck in favor of getting some sleep.

It was a sober, cranky, and disagreeable Felix that met Locus at his out of the way landing site the next morning. Music already blaring and drowning out whatever Locus said to him upon arrival—he avoided accidentally reading his lips by refusing to look at him—he stomped into the Pelican, threw his bags into a pile in a corner, and proceeded to deny his existence for the majority of the trip. Only once did Felix speak to him and that was to give directions to the pickup site he and his arms-dealer had decided on the night before.

There was still the matter of the Pelican that Felix had bought, but instead of cluing Locus into that, he just sent the seller a message and rescheduled procurement for another day. He might have agreed to work with the asshole, but Locus didn’t control what he did with his free time. If he had to slip out for a few days to go acquire his transport, Locus would have to deal. Or replace him on an op with Wash. He was good at that. Felix didn’t imagine it would be a problem to do it again.

Another level of tension settled over them when, after they finally arrived at the penthouse, Locus gestured toward the guest suite and told him that he could stay there. Felix would have feigned obliviousness to the offer, but the music player had run out of charge on the trip and he’d already stowed it in his luggage.

“I’m not staying here,” Felix told him flatly, startled by the preposterousness of the idea into giving him a narrow-eyed forbidding glare.

Locus didn’t sigh, but his long-suffering expression suggested that he really wanted to do it. “Felix—”

“I agreed to _work_ with you,” he interrupted him sharply. “Not move in and play house.”

Now he did sigh. It was silent, but Locus’ lips parted slightly and his shoulders heaved noticeably, giving him away. “That is not what I’m asking you. I have secure accommodations available. Utilizing them will not deplete your resources and it will make executing the mission more streamlined. Be reasonable.”

In a perfect world, Felix would have to agree with him because what he was saying made sense. The penthouse was the kind of cushy luxury Felix craved and not only was it available, it was free. On top of that, being the paranoid, anally retentive man that he was, Locus had probably secured the place against the apocalypse. It was huge, too, so they would have plenty of room to work. But that perfect world was haunted now by the spectre of Locus’ betrayal and there was just no getting around it.

Felix scowled so severely that it felt like he pulled something in his face. “I think it’s pretty fucking reasonable not to want to be here while you parade your little boytoy around like some kind of screwed up happily ever after.”

Anger flashed hot and bright in Locus’ eyes. “Washington is not here,” he retorted tightly, his voice hard in what Felix knew from experience was an effort to rein in his temper. “He has nothing to do with this. You need to stop making everything about him.”

“Me?” Outraged, Felix dropped his luggage and crossed the distance between them so fast that he didn’t register the movement until pain shot up his arm from how hard he rammed his forefinger into Locus’ chest. “ _You_ made it about him, Locus. _You_ did this.” Yanking his hand back, he threw his arms wide. “All of this is _your_ fault! So fucking own it instead of acting like a goddamn victim.”

He could have left it there, but he’d spent days deliberately _not_ thinking about what Locus had done and the ramifications of what that meant. It came boiling up within him now with all the force of volcano finally erupting. “ _You_ chose him. _You_ let me die. _You_ fucked him. _You_ made this whole fucking future happen. So if you don’t like the consequences of _your_ decisions, too fucking bad for you.”

The fury—he didn’t dare let himself feel anything else—was so strong that it almost hurt. It felt like he couldn’t breathe and no matter how fast he tried to gulp in air, his lungs continued to collapse in on themselves. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this angry. Even those first few seconds when he’d discovered what had been done to Locus’ face paled in comparison to this white-hot rage. It took everything he had not to reach for a knife and drive it into Locus’ chest over and over until whatever passed for a heart in the bastard was pulverized.

There was something going on behind Locus’ eyes. Felix could see it, like clouds roiling in the sky before a storm, but he didn’t know how to decipher what it meant. And quite frankly, he didn’t really care, either. Shaking his head, he stepped back and turned to go get his luggage and get the fuck out of there.

Locus caught his arm, his grip strong enough to stall his forward momentum. Felix whipped around, reaching for a knife with his free hand, but by the time he was facing him again Locus had let him go.

“I know what I did,” Locus said quietly, meeting Felix’s eyes and holding them through the simple intensity of his stare. “I’ve had four years to reflect on everything I’ve done.”

_If there’s some whining sob story here, I’m going to knife you_ , Felix thought angrily, trying unsuccessfully to bore a hole through his head with the force of his displeasure alone. _I don’t even care._

“I can’t change it, but I...” Here words appeared to fail him. Locus frowned, the muscles along his jaw working, yet nothing further came out of his mouth. Felix folded his arms over his chest and tapped his foot impatiently, not quite certain why he was humoring this stupidity but fully intent on making sure that Locus knew how unhappy he was to be doing it. After a moment of nothing, he breathed out hard through his nose. “Is this really what you want?”

Felix’s eyebrows shot up. “Is _what_ really what I want? To find out that you’re a backstabbing son of a bitch?” His mouth twisted in a sneer. “Yeah, Locus. Totally nailed it.”

Locus just looked at him, either unimpressed by the insult or refusing to rise to the bait. Maybe both. “I want to try to fix this.”

“Fix it?” Felix echoed, momentarily sidetracked from his anger by sheer bafflement. “You mean like, go back in time and kill the sims instead of me? Or unfuck Wash? Is that what you mean? Because if you have one of those time-traveling teleportation grenades, pony it up so I can get the fuck out of here.”

Not that he wanted to go back and experience the death he had somehow managed to avoid the first go round. But if he went back in time, he could betray Locus first. He could kill Wash and the sims, give Locus the fucking finger, and leave him stranded on Chorus like he deserved. And even if he couldn’t somehow avoid dying, it would beat hanging around in this nightmare future he couldn’t stand.

During his tirade, Locus’ expression took on a pained cast. “You know that isn’t what I meant.”

That was true. Felix did know what he meant. But he would be damned if he gave him even that much. “I don’t know a goddamn thing about you anymore,” he returned waspishly.

For a moment, Locus just looked at him. There was an assessing quality to the stare that only served to make Felix glare harder. It made him think that Locus was going to try to argue with him, but all he said was, “Washington has never been here. He doesn’t even know the location of this place. The only person who knows where I am is you.”

Evidently that was supposed to make up for fucking the Freelancer. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t. “You talk to him. He sends you intel.”

Locus nodded. “On encrypted frequencies and for the purpose of the mission. As far as I know, he isn’t in this star system." 

It was a possibility. Apparently the joke was on Felix and anything was a possibility. _Or..._ “Or he could be staying on the floor below you.”

That got one of those pursed lip _you’re being ridiculous_ looks that he knew so well. “He is not.”

The most disgusting part of this entire conversation was that it was working. Felix wasn’t getting overwhelmed with affection and forgiveness, but he was still talking to Locus. He was still standing there in front of him instead of grabbing his shit and getting the hell out of there. He was _listening_ to what Locus had to say like any of it mattered. He hated it. He hated himself for being this easily swayed by him. And most of all, he hated Locus.

Since their initial meeting on that doomed nowhere planet during his first deployment, it felt like they were chained together. In the beginning, it hadn’t bothered him. They were like a force of nature when they fought together, implacable and invincible, and when fighting melted into fucking, they reached levels of pleasure and satisfaction that Felix had never been able to find with anyone else. But as time passed and things began to change, it had started to chafe. Because Locus didn’t _need_ him. Because he started to slip away centimeter by centimeter until not even Felix could deny the yawning chasm of distance between them. Now, it felt like those chains were strangling him. Locus had abandoned him, had left him to _die_ , and had taken up with the enemy, and despite every reason not to be, Felix was _still there._

Whatever insidious power Locus had over him couldn’t even be broken by betrayal and death. It was beyond fucked up and Felix knew it. Knew it and still couldn’t seem to do a goddamn thing about it.

Admitting defeat didn’t come easily to Felix. He was staring it in the face, quite literally, and it was still so galling to know that no matter how hard he struggled against it, he could feel the words of capitulation crawling up the back of his throat toward his tongue. To stave it off, he jerked his head, gesturing with his chin to the penthouse in general. “Why do you have all this anyway?”

If he recognized it for the pitiful attempt at self-deception that it was, Locus didn’t let on. “Location, misdirection, and discretion.”

“Care to elaborate on all of that?”

“I told you,” Locus replied. “This is the highest building in the city. I can store the Pelican on the roof without worrying about anyone noticing anything amiss.”

“Isn’t that what the cloaking device is for?” Felix asked sarcastically.

“And if a bird landed on it?” Locus returned, sounding more patient than Felix would have expected at this junction.

He had him there. On the ground, a cloaked Pelican ran the risk of someone running into it. Placing it somewhere elevated would take care of that, but if it was within eyesight, environmental variables might give it away. A bird at rest seeming to float in midair. Rain forming a noticeable shape around something that repelled it. Leaves and bits of trash riding an air current and getting stuck on the edge of a wing or across the cockpit windshield. But if it was high enough, no one would be able to see any of that.

Not willing to concede the point gracefully, Felix demanded, “Misdirection?”

“I’m running raids on Alvaro’s operation. Where would you expect me to be working from?”

Felix didn’t respond to that either, if only because the answer was so simple he didn’t want to dignify it by saying it out loud. They’d stayed in tumbledown shacks, shitty motels, and abandoned bunkers more times than he could count. No doubt Alvaro would expect Locus to be following that pattern and would have his men searching all of the most nondescript, out of the way places on the planet. A ritzy high-rise in the middle of a bustling city probably wouldn’t cross his mind.

“And money buys discretion,” Locus continued, for once not making him prompt him to explain. “The people who staff this building have a history of looking the other way when it comes to their residents. They don’t mark my coming and going.”

As much as he wanted to find fault with everything Locus said, Felix had to admit to himself that it was a sound plan. And since Alvaro’s goons hadn’t shot up the place or attacked, it was obviously working. _Just say yes and get it the fuck over_ , he told himself firmly. _You can’t stall forever._

Scowling, Felix jabbed his forefinger in the direction of the guest room. “For however long this job lasts, that’s mine.”

There was no triumph or satisfaction on Locus’ face at having gotten what he wanted. His neutral expression didn’t change. “Agreed.”

“And you—” Felix pointed at him. “—don’t come in without my permission.”

“Agreed.”

It felt too easy. “Wash doesn’t set foot here. _Ever._ ” 

Locus nodded. “Agreed.”

Eyes narrowing, Felix continued sharply, “If he does, I will kill him. No hesitation.”

As the savior of the human race that no one had asked for, Locus should have argued that point. If not because killing _innocent_ —and wasn’t that a fucking joke, Wash wasn’t innocent at all—people was wrong, then because they were fuckbuddies of some sort. But Locus only nodded for a second time. “Agreed.”

“Are you just saying that because you think I can’t do it?” Felix asked suspiciously.

“You are laying out your terms for remaining here,” Locus replied evenly. “I’m agreeing to them, not casting aspersions on your ability to enforce them.” 

Felix didn’t like it, but at this point, there was no further argument he could make and he was tired of talking to Locus. He wanted to get away from him, maybe drown all the things he didn’t want to think about by taking another one of those showers, and check to make sure that his armor was still there and in one piece.

“Fine,” he snapped, spinning around to pick up his shit. Without further comment or backward glance at Locus, he stalked toward the guest room.

As he was crossing the threshold into it, Locus called out to him. “I’ll put the mission details together and brief you in a few hours.”

“Whatever,” he shot back querulously, not bothering to glance over his shoulder at him. Hoping to emphasize the point he was trying to make, namely that he was sick of dealing with him, Felix dropped his bags once he was inside and slammed the door behind him.

* * *

Felix was sleeping—after having spent considerable time checking over the meticulously stacked pile Locus had made of his armor in his absence, organizing what passed for his collection of possessions, and lingering over another fantastic shower—when a knock at the door roused him. For a few confused seconds, he couldn’t remember where he was or what was going on, but then Locus called out to him and all the unpleasant memories came rushing back.

“I’m ready to go over the intel when you are,” was all Locus said. There was no additional impatient knock. There weren’t any demands that Felix stop screwing around and get out there right that minute. There wasn’t anything else, and after the silence kept dragging on, he realized that Locus had gone back to whatever he’d been doing.

That was new. Ordinarily, Locus had no patience for Felix’s penchant for lollygagging during a mission. He certainly never let the timetable for briefings up to Felix, knowing that if he did they either wouldn’t happen at all or wouldn’t last long enough to cover the information he felt was important to review. Which, unfortunately, meant _every_ boring, nitpicky detail of everything he could uncover about the situation, regardless of whether it was immediately applicable or relevant to the task at hand. Felix tended to tune most of it out, having perfected the art of nodding or making an agreeable noise at the right pauses or looking oh so interested and intent whenever Locus glanced his way.

But here he was, leaving the exciting recitation of all the information he’d gathered up to whenever Felix wanted to hear it? That was a mistake and he had to know it. Felix didn’t actually _want_ to hear anything he had to say and would quite happily ignore his existence forever if given the opportunity. Locus might have gotten dumb and weird in the last couple years, but he couldn’t have gotten _that_ naive.

The obvious explanation that Felix didn’t want to consider was that Locus hadn’t been lying about wanting to try to fix things between them. That wasn’t possible. There was no fixing any of it; if there had been, Felix would have been the first one leaping toward the solution and grabbing for it with both hands. But Locus _was_ making concessions and compromises. Just because Felix wouldn’t accept them or publicly acknowledge them didn’t mean that he was oblivious to them.

_That fucking blanket._ It was probably stupid for something so meaningless to stand out in his mind as proof that Locus was trying to fix the mess he’d made, but the few times he’d let himself at least humor the possibility, that was the memory he kept coming back to.

Running his fingers through his hair in prelude to rubbing at his temples, Felix flopped over onto his back and stared blankly at the ceiling for a few minutes. He wasn’t going to go running every time Locus called like an obedient dog. He hadn’t done that when things were good between them. He sure as fuck wasn’t going to do it now. And as much as he didn’t want to reward Locus for his too-late overtures, he also didn’t want to prolong the agony of having the briefing looming over his head. Better to get it over with as soon as possible so that he could go back to pretending that Locus wasn’t there.

Eventually, after another ten minutes or so of doing absolutely nothing, Felix got up, brushed his hair, and left the room. Locus was not waiting impatiently outside his door. He had been in the living room, however, and from the look of it had apparently been busy converting a space meant for leisure into a workshop. There were folders neatly arranged in an anal-retentive spread across the coffee table and three tiny data chips lined up in a precise row below them. There was just enough space left for a laptop, which was currently on and open. On the floor near the couch was a small stack of larger folders that evidently hadn’t fit into the placement scheme on the table. The only thing that was missing was Locus.

Giving the whole setup a dubious frown, Felix crossed over to the couch. As his angle of sight changed, he was able to see the laptop’s screen. He’d been expecting some kind of report, maybe, or a chart. Locus had always loved charts. What he saw instead was a screensaver image that made him stop dead in the middle of the rug.

The outer edges of the image were a little distorted and filled with a familiar display of readouts, marking it as a HUD’s view from inside a helmet. In the center it was clearer and it showed an armor-clad figure in the middle of some kind of expansive hand gesture, standing against a backdrop of metal. The armor was a mottle of dark grey and orange. The background was clearly the room in some sort of militaristic base. Felix recognized it instantly.

They’d regrouped after revealing the true nature of their purpose on Chorus to the sims and subsequently failing to kill them. Which, despite arguments to the contrary, had _not_ been Felix’s fault. And there had been plenty of arguments the whole way back to the base. He’d been in the middle of one of them when that image had been captured.

_“Duped by a Freelancer posing as one of our own men.”_

Their helmets recorded everything. Regular purging of the files was a necessary part of using the armor effectively. It wasn’t a surprise that Locus’ helmet had recorded that exchange. What was surprising was that he’d kept it. What was even more surprising was that he had kept a _still_ from it and was now, almost five years later, using it as a screensaver for his fucking laptop.

_Can’t be real_ , Felix thought, glaring suspiciously at the screen. _He must have put it on there today and left it there so I’d see it and think it meant he cared._ That theory didn’t address the fact that something had made him keep it in the first place, but it covered its appearance now well enough that he didn’t look too far into debunking it. 

“It _was_ your fault,” Locus said behind him, startling him out of his scrutiny of the laptop. He hadn’t heard his approach and it was too late to disguise his staring so Locus wouldn’t realize what he was looking at. He’d been caught. “If you had shut up, we could have killed them then.”

Felix started to turn to scowl at him, but Locus was already moving around him into view. In his hands were two bottles of something that looked like beer. Another folder was pinned against his side by his arm. _Beer?_ Felix’s eyes snapped up from the bottles to Locus’ face. _At a briefing?_ _Who the fuck are you?_

“You don’t know that for sure,” he argued back automatically, the words leaving his mouth on some kind of weird autopilot. He was still too bewildered by the bottles, one of which Locus was putting into his hand, to stop it from happening.

“That argument didn’t work then and it won’t work now,” Locus returned mildly as he took a seat on the couch in front of the laptop. As he put in a passcode to wake it up, he gestured with the remaining bottle toward the empty space next to him. “Sit down. We have a lot to cover.”

It was a trap. It had to be. The whole thing reeked of an elaborate setup meant to get him to let his guard down and trust a duplicitous bastard. Felix would have wholeheartedly believed that that was what was going on, were it not for the fact that Locus had never been all that manipulative. Things changed, boy did he fucking know _that_ , but as poorly as he wanted to think of him, he had a hard time swallowing the notion that that was what all of this was. Unfortunately, it was the only explanation he had. Nothing else made any goddamn sense.

"What's with the beer?" he asked warily as he took a seat as far from Locus as the couch allowed. The suspicious glance Felix slanted his way caught him in the midst of looking over at him in exasperation.

"You used to say that mission briefings would be more tolerable with alcohol," Locus responded in a tone that was mostly patient.

Felix scowled openly at him. "Yeah, and you always told me no."

For a moment, there was silence as they stared at each other. There was a message in Locus' eyes and ordinarily, Felix would have tried to read it. Once upon a time, he would have translated it correctly. Now he ignored it, refusing to open himself up to whatever asinine thing Locus was trying to cheat his way out of saying. After a while, Locus must have cottoned on, because he sighed and took a swig from his bottle.

_Locus._ Took a _drink_. In the middle of planning for a fucking mission.

"I said a lot of things," he said quietly after he swallowed the mouthful of beer. "It didn't always make me right."

_What the fuck does that even mean?_ It was getting a little too surreal for Felix to stomach. Sentimentality didn't fit Locus very well. And an attempt to make work _fun_ was even more out of place than his voluntary admission that he wasn't always right. It was profoundly unsettling, like he'd walked into the middle of a play without being told what the script was or what role he was meant to take.

"It isn't poisoned," Locus said after the silence continued for too long.

Felix frowned. "I didn't say—"

With uncanny perception, Locus cut him off. "And this isn't a trap. You never liked my methods when it came to work and I never appreciated yours. Our refusal to compromise with each other led to too many unnecessary disagreements in the past." There was a disturbing earnestness to Locus' eyes. Felix flatly refused to be moved by it. "I don't want to make the same mistakes now."

_No_ , he thought snidely. _You'd rather make new ones. Blond, Freelancer shaped mistakes._ "So, what? Now you're the paragon of compromise?"

He was trying to be antagonistic. He knew it. He knew Locus knew it. But instead of rising to the bait and losing his temper the way Felix was anticipating, Locus just shook his head. "I'm not the paragon of anything. You know that."

The conversation was starting to get away from him. There were undercurrents of meaning swirling through it that Felix didn't want to acknowledge, much less actually address. Maybe they could have done that once. Tried to sort out the mess their lives had become and try to find common ground again. But Locus had betrayed him. Worse than getting him killed, he'd fucked the enemy afterward. There was no going back from that and thinking about it just made parts of Felix ache like old, poorly healed wounds. It wasn't worth it. Not anymore.

"Fine," he conceded with a disinterested shrug, needing to get the briefing back on track and away from all of the unspoken words hovering around them like ghosts. He noticed the way Locus' lips pursed at the brush off but chose to ignore it. "You want to get trashed while we go over this shit, sure. Why not?"

Locus gave him an unimpressed look. "That's not what I meant."

Pointedly, Felix took an exaggerated gulp of beer and gestured with the bottom of the bottle toward the coffee table. "Alvaroso's making genocide weapons while we fuck around."

"Alvaro," Locus corrected him quietly. After a sharp, piercing stare that Felix returned with determined blandness, he sighed and leaned forward to brush his fingers across the laptop's screen to wake it up. "I've compiled a—"

"An encyclopedia's worth of information on everything the guy's ever done," Felix cut in, hoping to hurry the bulk of the boring part of the meeting along. "I know. Here." He held out his free hand. "Let me see the dossier."

As much as he hated the guy, there were benefits of taking a job from someone he'd spent more than a decade working with. Knowing how Locus operated was one of them. He nodded, reached for one of the folders next to the table, and handed it over. Felix settled back against the couch, flipped it open, and started to sort through the neatly organized sheets of information.

Photographs. Family history. Financial holdings. Hobbies. Habits. Likes and dislikes. Favorite places to vacation. It was all there. To Felix, it seemed a little like overkill, but he supposed that _maybe_ some of this information would be useful. At least in the initial stages of the operation, and judging by the surfeit of intel that Locus had gathered, they'd long since passed that point.

For the next two hours, they played the information exchange game. Felix finished perusing a file and Locus replaced it with another. His first beer was long empty by the time they reached the end of the stacks of files and his second—Locus had gotten up and fetched another set while he'd been engrossed in reading a riveting account of the target's itinerary for the next six months—was more than halfway gone.

"All right," Felix said, rubbing at his eyes. "So the guy likes money and isn't very scrupulous about how he goes about getting it. How many places have you hit already?"

"Last night was the third," Locus replied, keying up a file on the laptop. Across the room, the same video appeared on the TV. "I have security footage and sensor readouts from the others."

Felix slanted him a glance that was half exasperation and half amusement. "And the blueprints for the buildings, the medical history of everyone who's ever worked at them, and their current locations, right?"

Locus looked over and arched an eyebrow. "You'll be thankful for the blueprints when we detonate the production facility," he said dryly.

That earned him a snort. "Get big enough explosives and you won't need to fuck around with blueprints."

Ignoring him, Locus started the video. Rolling his eyes, Felix watched it critically, slowly nursing his beer. It went like a standard op. Cameras went down before Locus ever appeared on them. A few were obviously—to his trained eye, anyway—looped to show nothing remarkable happening. None of it was terribly noteworthy where Locus' infiltration techniques were concerned, but Felix was more interested in the layout of the building and the number of personnel.

"If you hit three, they're going to increase their security," he commented after the video was over. He gestured to the mess of information in front of them. "Is any of this even relevant anymore? The guy's got to know he's a target. It doesn't make sense for him to stick to his old plans."

"You're right," Locus replied with a nod. "He has increased security. Changed the locations of his facilities too. I've accounted for that."

Locus might have been good, but he wasn’t _that_ good. And it was doubtful that he was getting all of this intel from his pet Freelancer. There was _at least_ a third person involved, exponentially increasing the difficulty of successfully completing the objective and making the whole thing more dangerous than it already was. Even professionals broke under the right kind of questioning. And if Alvaro found out that one of his people had betrayed him, he could feed misinformation through the informant and lead them into a trap.

"Insider?" Felix guessed.

"Yes." 

"Who?"

"Unknown." Locus frowned, and Felix knew that he was taking the hole in his intel personally. He always did. "I've attempted to trace the information back to the source, but so far my efforts have been inconclusive. No one close to Alvaro or anyone who might have access to the project's information fits the profile of an informant. Can't find a motive either."

That didn’t sit well with Felix. He didn’t have to ask what Locus thought about it. Which begged the question of why he’d taken the job then. A death wish? That didn’t seem like Locus’ style. Because the Freelancer had asked? Just entertaining the idea made Felix so angry he wanted to smash the bottle and stab Locus with the broken pieces. It just didn’t add up.

“But you still want to do the job?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Felix demanded, before sweeping a hand out to indicate all of the gathered information. “This is some shady shit. You know that. I know you know that.”

Locus dipped his head in silent agreement. Despite agreeing with him, he still said, “It’s worth the risk.”

No it wasn’t. One man—even one with a small group of equally suicidal idiots backing him—couldn’t stop the development of the next installment in the latest and greatest weapons people used to kill each other. Even if this op was legitimate and Locus managed to pull it off, another asshole would come along with a similar idea. He wasn’t going to be able to stop them all. Felix couldn’t understand why he’d even want to do that. It was such a waste of time.

“How do you even know this thing’s real?”

In answer, Locus brought up another video and set it to play on the TV. It opened on a group of people milling around in an enclosed space. They looked a little grubby and thin. Felix’s first thought was that they were poor, probably homeless. Then he noticed their expressions: wary, fearful, and nervous. _Prisoners,_ he realized. _Captives_.

The shot panned back, widening until Felix could see a door on the other side of the room. It opened, admitting a group of armed men that were obviously guards of some sort. The prisoners noticed immediately and amid cries of alarm, shrank back against the far wall. Behind the guards were two unarmed men. One carried a datapad and the other a large case. As the guards set up a parameter, the man with the case set it down on the floor, opened it, and took out an object that looked like a large, unwieldy gun. After a brief discussion with the guy with the datapad that was inaudible over the noise everyone else was making, the guy with the gun stood up and made a gesture toward the crowd.

“Trial one hundred and seventy-six,” said a deep male voice, presumably the one operating the camera. “Ionization module has been replaced with prototype seven-sixty-eight after last trial’s failure to properly isolate organic material.”

The weapon’s operator was powering up the device during this recitation, deep red lights flickering to life along its length. The guy shouldered it like a rocket launcher, using two hands to stabilize it. The commotion from the prisoners rose dramatically, creating a din of screams that made it impossible to tell if the cameraman was adding any more notes to the video. When the weapon fired, it sent a beam of reddish-orange light into the crowd. Agonized shrieks rose sharply, then cut off as the bodies of those hit seemed to just _melt_ , muscle and bone liquefying near instantly.

It was gruesome as hell, unlike anything Felix had seen during the war, but he watched the video in silent, morbid fascination as the gun's operator wiped out the rest of the group. By the end, the floor was covered in puddles of oily brown liquid and all other traces of the prisoners were gone. Oddly, the guy with the gun looked disappointed as he glanced toward the camera.

“Set up for the next trial,” he instructed, then waved dismissively toward the mess on the floor. “And get this cleaned up.”

The video cut out then, but Felix kept staring at the TV afterward as if it might shed some light on what the fuck he'd just seen. He wasn't particularly horrified by the willful slaughter of what was more than likely a group of randoms who'd been abducted for no purpose other than to test out the efficiency of the gun. He didn't know them. He wouldn't have cared if he had. It was the idea of a gun that turned people to sludge that kept him preoccupied, though judging from the guy's reaction, it wasn't supposed to liquefy its targets.

"So, what?" he asked, turning to look at Locus. He gestured toward the TV. "Melting people isn't enough for the guy?" 

Locus didn't answer the immediate question. Instead, he volleyed back one of his own. "Now do you understand why he must be stopped?" 

"To keep the price of mops from skyrocketing?" Felix hazarded.

The attempt at humor got him a scowl and a stern, "That isn't funny."

He shrugged. "I thought it was."

The scowl deepened into outright disapproval. "Felix."

"What?" Felix wrinkled his nose. "Some guy builds a melty gun. You're upset about it and want to stop him." It was as succinct and accurate a summation of what he’d seen and heard over the last few hours as he could make it. "Whatever. I don't care."

He really didn't. The people in the video meant nothing to him. The people who would inevitably find themselves on the business end of the gun, provided Alvaro's engineers ever got it working the way he wanted, meant nothing to him. In the grand scheme of Felix's life, none of it mattered. Locus could harp on the needs of the many all he wanted and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. As far as Felix was concerned, the needs of the very few were all that had ever mattered.

Locus was still staring at him like he could implant a fretful conscience into him through sheer force of will. Felix looked blandly back at him and rolled his eyes. "You aren't paying me for moral outrage, Locus. You're paying me to kill people and blow shit up."

"He's testing it on innocent people," Locus countered, like that wasn't obvious from the pilfered video. "He's going to keep doing it until he perfects it and then anyone will be able to purchase one of those guns. No bodies left behind. No evidence of murder."

_Blah blah blah,_ Felix thought sarcastically, already bored with the conversation. "Look, if you want me to pretend to care, you're going to have to pay me more." He made a rolling _hurry it up_ gesture with his hand. "Otherwise, we can skip the human interest angle. I already said I'd do the damn job."

When he got the disappointed look this time, it was accompanied by a sigh. "It really doesn't bother you." It wasn't a question. Locus said it like he'd just been blindsided by some kind of shockingly unforeseen revelation.

Felix scoffed. "That shit's never bothered me and you know it. Stop acting like it's breaking news."

For a long, strangely awkward moment, Locus stared at him. There was a scrutinizing quality to the stare, as if he was trying to peel back the layers of Felix's personality and find the answer to some pointless moral question. Felix weathered it as best he could, getting more irritated and restless the longer it drug on. That Locus had the audacity to judge him like he was obviously doing was infuriating, but more than that, it was the unspoken assumption that he cared what he thought of him that rankled. Once upon a time, he had. Felix had never admitted it, but there'd been a period of his life where too much of what he'd done had been in an effort to influence Locus' opinion of him. But now, after being betrayed so utterly by the bastard, he didn't give a shit.

And maybe Locus realized that, because finally he stopped studying him and simply asked, "Why?"

"Why what?" Felix countered, whatever meager feeling of neutrality toward Locus he'd been nursing along with the beer gone. "Why don't I care? I could ask why you do, but there's no fucking point. I'm not going to understand it and you—" He flicked a finger at him. "—are so caught up in playing savior of the galaxy that you aren't going to understand why I don't. So drop it. Or call your fucking boyfriend and complain to him since he's the only one who _understands_ you now."

He could see Locus mentally count to ten at the snide remark. It was in the way his eyelids fluttered for a second, like he wanted to close them but refused to do it, and his lips compressed into a tight line. A tiny thread of anticipation twisted through Felix as he waited for Locus' temper to snap and this feigned peace to disintegrate into an argument. He was beyond ready for it. But Locus, eternal disappointment that he was, didn't take the bait.

Quietly, he began, "Isaac—" 

_Oh, fuck no._ Felix cut him off with a harshly snapped, " _Don't_." 

"Just—" 

"No." It was like the other night all over again. Felix could feel the fury kicking up like a whirlwind inside him. The beer bottle was still in his hand; all too easily he could see himself smashing it against the edge of the table and driving the jagged shards of whatever was left into Locus' throat. Angry temptation made his fingers itch to do it and if Locus kept talking like the manipulative fuck he wasn't very good at being, Felix had a feeling he was going to give in to it. "You don't get to do that anymore. You lost that right when you let me die and celebrated by sticking your dick in Wash."

There it was. There was the temper he was waiting to see in Locus' eyes. He didn't raise his voice, but there was a razor-sharp edge to his low voice when he snapped back, "I didn't _celebrate._ "  

Felix just laughed bitterly in his face.

"You don't know what I—"

"You're fucking right I don't know," Felix snarled over whatever Locus meant to finish that with. "I was _dead_. And you think, what? This little show is going to make me forget that?"

"What show?" Locus returned in open exasperation. "There's no _show_."

"No?" Felix lifted his eyebrows as high as they'd go. "What's all this then? The picture, the beer, that fucking blanket, this whole..." There wasn't a single word that would sum up everything that had happened since his arrival in the future. He made do with a snarl of irritation and a sharp wave of his hand instead. "You want me to help you with this job, fine. I like money and I like killing people. But I don't like _you_. I _hate_ you. I don't want to be your friend. I don't want to have little heart-to-heart talks with you like anything you say means something. I don't want anything to do with you. Give me the intel. Give me the destination and the target. Then shut the fuck up and let me alone until it's time to go to work. That's how you liked to operate before your little Freelancer-shaped _revelation_. So that's how we're going to operate now or the deal's off and you can get yourself killed on your own time. Understand?" 

He wanted to argue with him. There was a muscle twitching in the corner of Locus' jaw like he was fighting against opening his mouth or grinding his teeth in anger. There was something in his eyes too, though Felix couldn't immediately identify it and didn't care enough to try. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that he stopped trying to _connect_ with him or whatever the fuck this was and got back to business.

After a tense, silent moment, Locus ground out a terse, "Fine." 

The sense of vindictive triumph Felix was waiting for never came. Something else tried to seep in through the cracks of his anger, something bitter and uncomfortable, but he ignored it as best he could. Dwelling on it wouldn't help or fix everything that had been broken. Felix knew it and he had just a smidgen of self-respect left not to make the attempt to try.

Standing up, Felix gave Locus a narrow-eyed glare. "When do we leave for the op?"

Again, he saw the flex of the muscle along Locus' jaw. "Tomorrow at oh-one hundred."

_Bright and fucking early. Great. Just great._ Disgusted, he turned to head back to his room. He was going to need to get an early, intoxication-free night in order to rouse himself from bed at that ungodly time and be sharp enough not to fuck up during the mission. It made him wonder if Locus had chosen that hour to be a petty asshole. Ordinarily, he would have assumed not, but anymore, he couldn't tell.

"We aren't done with—" Locus started, before he managed to get halfway around the couch.

For just a second, Felix paused, but his willingness to play nice was gone. He just didn't have it in him. Moving again, he tossed the words negligently over his shoulder with all of the disinterest and carelessness that Locus had always accused him of having toward everything. "Write down what I need to know. I'll read over it during transport."

He didn't linger around to hear if Locus had a response to that. Picking up the pace, he slipped swiftly into his room and locked the door behind him. He had a long, boring evening ahead of him, but given his options, he figured the laptop would be better company than anything else the building had to offer.

* * *

“Comms check.” 

In the middle of doing one last check of the accessibility of his extra ammunition and knives, Felix rolled his eyes in irritation. “Say again,” he instructed after a short delay, deadpan. “I think the implant shorted when I got off the Pelican.”

When Locus’ immediate response was silence, he smiled in vindictive triumph. It was a stupid fucking question. They’d checked comms when they’d gotten on the Pelican. They’d checked _again_ right before he’d disembarked at his destination. Between the opening of the doors and Felix slipping into the production facility’s maintenance accessway, he’d suffered no falls, no discharges of random electromagnetic energy, no blows to the head, and no unexpected surgical procedures that might have compromised the efficacy of the tiny device Locus had injected into the skin just beneath his ear. It worked. Felix knew it worked. He knew Locus knew it worked. There was no reason to keep doing these little preliminaries; the mission had begun and they weren’t rookies who’d never infiltrated an enemy installation for the purpose of blowing it to hell before.

“Be serious,” Locus chided him, finally reaching the conclusion that Felix was fucking with him and the subdermal communications device was in working order.

“Stop asking me stupid fucking questions,” Felix hissed back at him. “This isn’t amateur hour. I know what I’m doing.”

“What’s your status?”

Felix glanced around the narrow corridor, dark but for the sickly green illumination provided by the nightvision visor he’d kept for his troubles during the impromptu rescue at that not-quite-so-abandoned storage facility. “Inside. Moving toward the first point.”

“Any contact?”

He pretended to think about it. “You mean aside from the early morning dance party the maintenance guys were having in the ventilation shaft?”

“Felix.”

Things were still strained between them. After the ultimatum Felix had laid down in the living room, Locus had left him alone. No difficult feat, since Felix hadn’t left his room until the alarm he’d set had roused him from less than perfect sleep for the op. He’d gotten dressed—dark clothes, no armor, designed for speed and total range of motion—and geared up in peace, then had joined Locus at the Pelican. Locus had passed over a datapad and Felix had settled into the back of the ship for the flight, reading up on all of the salient information Locus thought was necessary for the mission. In Felix’s professional opinion, it was probably going to be a clusterfuck, but he wasn’t being paid to consult on the project and unlike Locus, he didn’t care about making a huge spectacle with the mayhem he caused.       

Originally, when Locus had been set to play one-man wonder, the plan had been to hijack a fuel truck containing highly flammable material, drive it into Alvaro’s main production plant, and in the ensuing chaos, set enough charges to detonate the whole place. It wasn’t the secret facility he was using to develop or test the new guns, but this particular plant evidently made parts that were going into the experimental design’s construction. It would have been easier to just to hit the whole thing with a few missiles, but apparently that option either hadn’t crossed Locus’ mind or there was an upward limit on the amount of collateral damage he was willing to tolerate with his explosions.

Now that the team had doubled in size, they were still ignoring the easy missile option but were going to time the impact of the runaway truck with the detonations so that it would ostensibly look like maybe the whole mess was an accident. Why they were bothering with cloak and dagger bullshit when Alvaro knew that he was being targeted by someone was another mystery Felix couldn’t solve without initiating verbal contact with Locus and he didn’t want to do that. He’d consoled himself with the knowledge that this wasn’t his mission and he really didn’t give a shit what happened as long as he got paid. It made weathering the injection of the high-tech, highly classified—another gift from precious Wash, no doubt—comms system and accepting his role in the dumb plan more tolerable.

“You got eyes on the truck yet?” Felix asked, redirecting Locus’ attention off of being a pain in the ass and back toward his objective.

“Yes.” Then, just when it seemed like that was all he was going to say, he added, “ETA seven minutes.”

Felix did a quick calculation as he peered around a corner and found the hallway beyond it, predictably, empty. “That’ll give me time to set up the first charge and be well on my way to the second.”

“You need to set all nine before my arrival.”

He blew out a hard breath, annoyed. “I know. And unless you plan to go through slipspace, it’s going to take you about an hour and a half to get here. That’s plenty of time.”

“It’s a large building.”

“I saw the blueprints,” Felix responded dryly. “Now are you going to shut up and let me do my job here or what?

There was a very clear, very pointed moment of silence on the channel. Felix ground his teeth together, bracing for another round of bullshit. At the last second, Locus must have remembered that they were on the clock—metaphorically speaking—and simply grunted out a low, "Copy that."

Breathing a sigh of relief, Felix pushed thoughts of Locus aside and focused on the task at hand. It wasn't terribly difficult. The building had been laid out in a logical fashion, with plenty of maintenance corridors and underused side hallways. There were cameras and security measures, but those seemed to be designed for garden variety thieves and miscreants. The cameras were easy to avoid and even with his less than stellar hacking abilities, Felix could bypass the security panels. And due to the early hour of the morning, the facility was understaffed. As far as walks in the park went, this one ranked pretty high up on the list.

Felix got the first charge planted without a hitch and was nearing the location of the second when Locus checked in to report his successful acquisition of the truck. He was expecting another nagging demand for mission status, but Locus hadn't said anything else and the comms went blissfully silent again. The second, third, and fourth charges were laid without a problem. There was a slight wiring SNAFU with the fifth, but Felix improvised by tearing out an electrical socket—how likely was it that some industrious janitor was going to try to plug in a vacuum cleaner in one of the utility closets?—and cannibalizing the wires. He got six and seven hooked up and ready to go quickly, making up for the time he'd lost with the defective wiring, and was heading toward the west end of the building when the comms came back to life.

"Felix," Locus said tersely, his voice sounding just a _tiny_ bit strained. 

That brought him up short right in the middle of taking a step. Locus only ever sounded like that when something was wrong. Majorly wrong. Or at least, he _had_. For all Felix knew, now he was a veritable fount of emoting.

"What happened?" he asked warily, checking the hallway while he stood there. There wasn't even the tiniest speck of color on his visor.

The slight hesitation was telling. "The truck broke down en route."

From anyone else, Felix would have expected that to be a joke. It sounded like a joke. Like the punch line to a comedy that would result in a hilarious series of misadventures that _wouldn't_ get any of them killed. Unfortunately, Locus didn't joke—by his definition of joke—during missions anymore.

"How broke down are we talking here?" Felix prompted, checking a sigh. "Flat tire?"

"No," Locus replied irritably. "It's the engine. I'm working on it now."

_What?_ Felix stared blankly at the wall in front of him, trying to parse the mental image of Locus poking around at the engine of a big-ass tanker like some kind of mechanic. "You know how to fix a truck." It was too flat to be a question.

"Not entirely," Locus admitted. There was a barely noticeable change to his tone, indicative of sheepishness. Felix frowned. "I'm getting help."

The frown twisted into a scowl without needing to ask for clarification. Locus wasn't the sort to flag down a motorist and ask for assistance, especially in the middle of an operation, and there hadn't been a copy of _A Trucker's Guide to Trouble-Shooting Engine Problems_ stowed away in the Pelican. There was only one source of _help_ he could have possibly turned to in his hour of need and it sure as fuck hadn't been Felix.

Never mind that Felix's knowledge of the nitty-gritty of vehicle mechanics began and ended with how to hotwire them.

"So what?" he snapped, not bothering to hide the anger in his voice. "I just sit here and twiddle my thumbs or should I blow what I've set?"

"Negative," Locus replied immediately. "I need you to create a distraction."

_And I need Wash to fucking die already_ , Felix thought, barely managing to keep himself from saying it out loud. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Locus took his combative tone amazingly well, considering how little patience he ordinarily demonstrated for it. "It's going to take too long. The charges might be discovered. You need to keep attention away from them."

If he could scowl any harder, he thought he would pull a muscle in his face. "I have two more charges to set. It'll take about thirty minutes. You want to give me a better estimate of how long I'll need to distract everybody than _too long_?"

Another period of silence followed. Whether that meant Locus was calculating the time, consulting with his fuckbuddy, or looking for answers to their predicament up Wash's ass with his dick, Felix didn't know and was rapidly running out of patience waiting around to find out.

"You want to speed this up?" he demanded sarcastically. "I don't need to add dying of old age to my list of achievements today."

Immediately, he got a hard sigh. A moment later, words followed. "An hour. Two tops." 

That was a huge fucking margin of error. "Should've fucked a mechanic," he grumbled under his breath.

And oh, but for as deaf as Locus liked to play whenever it suited him, he heard that easily enough. "Excuse me?"

Felix ignored him. Having not been a part of the op from the start, he was a bit behind on all the necessary intel and that made improvising on the fly more difficult than he liked. "Your guy Alvaro, he got any defense contracts from anyone?"

He was half-expecting Locus to pursue arguing about his comment, but instead he curbed his affront and said evenly, "Three. One with Venezia, one with the inhabitants of Victoria, and one with the UNSC."

It wasn't pertinent to the moment, but surprise made Felix blurt out, "I thought the Covenant got Victoria."

Oddly, Locus didn't chastise him for wandering off point. "That's what they wanted everyone to think. Alvaro's records prove that did not happen."

"Fucking Innies," Felix muttered under his breath. He was far from a champion of law, order, and being a legally minded citizen, but even he got tired of the Insurrectionists and their unwavering ability to make every shitstorm exponentially worse. In the middle of an all-out war for survival against extinction, there the dumbasses were, killing the people who were trying to keep them alive just for the hell of it.

The visor prevented him from rubbing at the bridge of his nose, so he settled for scrubbing at his forehead instead. _Should've known this was going to go sideways. It was too fucking easy_.

"All right," he said after a moment, the beginnings of a gleam of inspiration glowing to life in the back of his mind. "I have an idea." _I think._

There was a few seconds of silence as Locus digested that, then he asked somberly, "What's your exit strategy?"

Felix scoffed. "I barely have an entry strategy." And it was possible that what he did have was going to get him killed. Maybe. Locus’ intel was pretty thorough, but it didn’t _really_ detail what the security personnel in the building were trained to handle. Casual threats, sure. But someone of his caliber? That was anybody’s guess. Of course, it was also possible that by the time Locus arrived the entire compliment of workers would be dead and all the pageantry would be for nothing. "I'll figure the rest out as I go."

Locus didn't approve. He didn't say anything about it, but Felix could feel it radiating through the comms anyway. All he said was, "Leave the channel open."

"Why?"

He sighed. "Just do it."

That sounded suspiciously like he wanted to keep tabs on what Felix was doing. _For all the good it'll do._ “You got a teleportation grenade hidden away in the cab of that truck that you’re going to use to ride in like the cavalry if I get in over my head?”

He didn’t have such a thing and they both knew it. “Keeping abreast of the situation will help me strategize the best course of complimentary action.”

“Like hurrying the fuck up with those _repairs_ and getting your ass here?” There was no need to be that snidely sarcastic. If Locus said the truck had broken down—of all the stupid, mundane things to have to screw up a job, that had to take the cake—Felix didn’t have to doubt it. He knew it wasn’t some painfully unsubtle code for Wash-fucking.

From the tone of his voice, it wasn’t hard to figure out that that was what he’d meant by the odd emphasis on the word, and from the tone of Locus’, he had cottoned on at least a little bit. “Get to work. I’ll contact you when I’m back on the road.”

_And a big fuck you to you too, you asshole,_ Felix thought nastily. He caught himself halfway to reaching up to deactivate the implant, waffling for a moment on whether he wanted to keep the channel open or not before deciding it would be easier on everyone if he just did as he’d been asked.

Locus didn’t say anything else and neither did Felix. He set the last two charges without incident, internally hoping that Locus would announce the truck operational by the time he was finished. But of course, that didn’t happen. It was radio silence for nearly a half hour, broken only when he reported in that the charges were set and Locus responded with the bad news: the truck was not yet operational.

He stood up from where he’d been crouched to hook up the final explosive, brushed his hands on his pants, and looked around. After years of relying on a HUD to feed him extra information, it was a simple thing to imagine that he could almost see the blueprints of the building superimposed over the visual feedback his eyes were giving him. He was in the western most part of the facility now. Alvaro’s office—rarely used, he knew, thanks to Locus’ meticulous notes—was centrally positioned. An amateur would assume that sensitive information would be kept there. A professional would know that wouldn’t be the case. It was balancing what a professional would know against what _he_ knew that was the issue.

As he stood there pondering his next move, well aware that time was ticking and that the longer he did nothing the more likely it was that someone from the next shift would inadvertently stumble upon one of the explosives, Felix checked his weapons. He’d prepared for stealth, not playing one-man strike team. He had a handgun, a number of clips, and a few knives: not the best loadout for an assault on a better equipped, fortified, and outfitted force. Improvising on an already improvised plan for a cause he didn’t believe in and a man he no longer trusted.

_The future fucking sucks_ , he thought sourly, heaving a sigh. _I’m not getting paid enough for this_. The smart thing to do, he knew, would be to ask Locus if there was any update to the ETA before he got underway. The petty part of him, however, wouldn’t hear of it.

Using the maintenance corridors, Felix exited the building as invisibly as he’d entered. The sky was still dark. Morning was coming with inexorable inevitability, but it hadn’t arrived yet, with its bright sky and bevy of employees. Stupid as it was, it was satisfying to see that if the truck hadn’t broken down, the op would have still been on schedule.

The plant wasn’t located so far on the outskirts of a settled area that random people were impossible to locate. Felix found some middle-aged asshole out jogging along the road of the nearby industrial park and as far as he was concerned, anyone who was out jogging before oh-four hundred deserved what they got. In this case, it was a slit throat and Felix stealing the guy’s clothes after he dumped the body in a ditch. The track pants and shitty windbreaker were a little too big—Fatty should’ve taken up jogging sooner—and made him feel like a douchebag, but they offered the kind of disguise he wanted. It took a few minutes to rearrange his weapons to his liking and to hide the visor, but once he had, he skulked through the shadows back to the plant.

This time, he eschewed using the maintenance corridors and settled for walking in the front door. It pricked at his sense of professionalism to be _this_ sloppy and stupid about it, but selling the lie was more important than his pride. Plus, there was a guard station on the far side of the lobby and he needed to borrow some extra guns.

Breezing in like he owned the place, Felix walked across the polished tile, marking the cameras and ever so subtly canting his head _just so_ in order to avoid his face showing up in any of the security footage. Knowing he was being recorded by the security system made his skin crawl, though he consoled himself with the prospect of getting to have the kind of fun that he was typically prohibited from on jobs like this.

The security guard looked up at him as he neared the desk. “Can I—”

Felix didn’t wait for him to finish. Pulling out his handgun, he shot him between the eyes without a word and vaulted over the desk. Unless Alvaro hired a bunch of morons, whoever was monitoring the cameras would likely be sounding the alarm now. He rummaged around quickly, yanking a pistol from the guard's belt and finding another in the drawer of the desk. Fully loaded, but not enough firepower to take out as many people as he knew would be necessary to get out of this unscathed.

_Why doesn't anyone invest in a damn rifle these days?_ he thought irritably as he tucked his own firearm into the loose waistband of his purloined track pants and headed deeper into the building, a _borrowed_ gun in each hand. _Fucking amateurs._

There was a bank of elevators nearby. Felix didn't take any of them. Instead, he elbowed open the door to the stairwell and started to climb. Alvaro's workshop was on the third floor, unmarked on the official directory of the building and the repository of his more sensitive files. If the contracts were here, they'd be in there. And if they weren't located on the premises, a professional would still assume that that was where they'd be.

 The sound of a door opening further up the stairwell broke into Felix's musings. Without missing a beat, he leaned sideways, looked up, and fired at a guard stepping out onto the second floor landing. The sound echoed deafeningly in the enclosed space, making his ears ring painfully and likely broadcasting his location to everyone in the vicinity. Unperturbed, he shook his head and ran faster, hopping over the body and the rapidly growing puddle of blood and charging up the remainder of the flights. A bevy of guards was _not_ clustered in the corridor on the other side of the third floor exit the way they should have been. If this was Alvaro beefing up security in light of Locus' raids on his properties, Felix couldn't imagine how useless it had been prior to the new measures. Two-bit criminals just starting out did better than this.

He finally met a real attempt at resistance when he rounded a corner two-thirds of the way to the "storage area" and found himself face-to-face with half a dozen armed guards. They were wearing bulletproof vests and had their sidearms out and at the ready. One of them opened fire immediately upon catching sight of him, causing him to abruptly duck into the open doorway at his left.

"Took them long enough," Felix muttered under his breath, thumbing the safeties—who the fuck got hired on as an armed guard and then kept the damn gun’s safety on?—off the dead guard's guns. "Thought I was dealing with—"

"What's going on?"

In the heat of the moment and the absence of the familiar weight of an earpiece, he'd forgotten that he'd kept the channel open and Locus was listening in. The sudden sound of his voice, coming from nowhere, made him jerk backwards with a yelp of surprise.

"Felix!" Locus demanded sharply. "What's—"

"Jesus fucking Christ," Felix cut him off, catching his breath with a huge gulp of air. "Warn a guy first. _Fuck._ "

"Are you—"

Scowling, Felix leaned through the doorway and fired off a few rounds at the guards edging toward his temporary hideout. One took a guy in the temple, dropping him like a rock. Another caught one in the throat, spraying his fellows with blood as they dived for cover. _Two down, four to go_.

"Little busy here," he murmured under his breath. At least, he hoped it was under his breath. It was a little hard to hear at the moment. "Don't call me. I'll call you."

Not wanting to give the guards the opportunity to regroup, Felix flung himself back out into the corridor, opened fire, and dove into a roll after the first two rounds were discharged. None of the guards were fast enough to correct their shots and by the time Felix had regained his footing, two more were dead. His momentum brought him up right in front of the third. Without pausing, he pulled the trigger. A dry _click_ announced that the dumbass who'd loaded it hadn't filled the clip before inserting it, further justifying his death downstairs.

Hissing a curse, Felix threw the empty gun at the man in front of him. It startled him into inactivity for a few precious seconds, giving him all the time he needed to shoot him with the other. That left one target, who was cowering behind a doorway and subsequently died back there after Felix negligently shot him.    

There was supposed to be more security personnel on hand this morning. Felix had seen the roster Locus had pulled from wherever he was getting his information. Either some of them had called off, just hadn’t shown up, or were so grossly incompetent that they weren’t mobilizing their numbers properly. _Or_ , the paranoid part of him pointed out, _this is a trick and they’re just as good at what they do as you are_.

It was doubtful. Felix knew that _nobody_ , except for Locus, was as good as he was. But the stupid thought was enough to make him slightly more wary as he made his way to his destination. Along the way, two lab technicians who either didn’t get the memo that a shooter was loose in the building or didn’t think that it could possibly happen to them, another somewhat braver and less moronic guard, and a woman of indeterminate position within the company met their untimely but swift demises. The dead guard provided Felix a new, almost fully loaded gun to use instead of his own, which got him a jaunty postmortem thanks as it was lifted from his dead, not yet cold hand.

Killing people had always been therapeutic for Felix. During the war, slaughtering his way through squads of hapless Unggoy, irritating Kig-Yar, and the martially superior Sangheili was a satisfying way to deal with all of the horrors of a war beyond the scope of anything anyone had ever imagined. After the war, it gave him something to do when he was feeling bored, restless, annoyed, or pissed off about something. Now, every bullet he expertly placed in the body of a target carried with it just a tiny bit of the conflicting jumble of feelings he didn’t want to acknowledge. It didn’t make him feel better about anything, but it sure as fuck was fun in the moment.

Sadly, there wasn’t a horde of angry production workers and armored guards clogging the hallways for him to mow down at his leisure. In fact, he didn’t encounter anyone else. When he paused outside the door of his destination, he couldn’t hear anything coming from inside. It wasn’t the best judge of occupancy, he knew; it could be filled with people and all of them too afraid, or too intent on luring him into a trap, to make a sound. But it did tell him that it wasn’t filled with clueless morons. That was something.

Drawing his gun with his free hand, Felix took a deep breath, kicked in the door, and spun into the doorway, ready to shoot anything that moved or made even the quietest noise. There was no one there. The overhead lights were on, illuminating another office that looked a lot more lived in than the one publically documented. There were projection screens on every wall, a holographic imagining board, a huge desk that probably cost more than most of the workers’ salaries, a fancy computer terminal, and a table strewn with parts of firearms. Unlike the old vids, there weren’t any convenient banks of file cabinets carefully labeled for him to easily find what he wasn’t actually looking for.

Heading toward the computer, Felix put his gun away and considered how he was going to make this look convincing. Given enough time, he probably _could_ hack the thing and find the contracts if they were on there, but encryption programs had probably changed a lot during the years he’d lost. It would take too long and it felt like too much of a waste to expend all that effort on something that didn’t matter.

He keyed up the computer, then abandoned the keyboard when the expected password protection appeared to rifle around inside the desk. Someone smart, which he assumed Alvaro was, wouldn’t leave passwords lying around inside a desk. Even in a locked drawer, which Felix found and immediately picked open just because he could. It would be something personal or arbitrary yet still memorable. But everyone knew that even smart people could be dumb as fuck sometimes and careless to boot. It paid to make it look like he was banking on that being the case here.

Felix pulled out folders and paged through reports, casually tossing them onto the desk or onto the floor when he was done with them. Secrecy had gone out the window when he’d shot up the place. There was no point in pretending that he was trying to maintain it. He looked through a ledger of expenses and notes and tore out a few pages that looked like they might be important to his fabricated employer. He dug out the contents of a cabinet and left them strewn across the floor. He was in the process of picking through a drawer with a false bottom when he heard the door open.

He had a gun up and pointed at the doorway immediately, before the sound even fully registered in his mind. There were armed guards crowding inside the room. Four of them, it looked like. Easy enough to dispatch and he almost did it. His finger tightened minutely against the trigger, but just before he got the first shot off, he realized that there might be an opportunity here if he could manipulate the situation properly.

One of the guards looked to be getting ready to shoot him without a word. Snapping his gun in the guy’s direction, Felix shook his head.

“You shoot me, you’re never getting the name of my employer,” he told him calmly, assessing the readiness of the others from the corner of his eyes. “Something tells me _yours_ won’t be happy about that.”

Although he hadn’t said anything since Felix had told him to shut up, Locus was still listening while he did whatever he was doing. That became apparent when he heard him hiss quietly, “What are you doing?”

Felix ignored him, lifting his eyebrows at his audience. “Or we can shoot each other.” He smiled then, all teeth and confident fearlessness. “Your choice.”

Neither the offer nor the expression belonged to a man who’d been caught in the middle of a blood-soaked crime. He wasn’t cowering. He wasn’t disarming or presenting himself as less of a threat. And it was working. The security guys glanced at each other uncertainly, taking their eyes off of him for mere seconds that would have gotten them all killed if this had been a real op and Felix thought he was in legitimate danger.

“Take him,” one of the guards said to the others.

“Wise choice,” Felix responded, lowering the gun with a touch of haughty disdain. “Maybe you guys are better trained than I thought you were.”

They weren’t. _At all_.

It started out all right. They surrounded him, two caught his arms between them, and the others disarmed him. But they only took the guns and two of his knives. Their cursory, ineffective search missed the others. Then they hustled him down a few hallways, into a room that looked like it couldn’t decide if it was an unused storage closet or some poor junior employee’s office, and tried to beat the shit out of him. It wasn't the worst beating of his life or even the most effectively demoralizing. It was two guys who took turns hitting him with closed fists in the gut and a few times in the face. Not creative or especially painful. His nose didn't get broken. None of his ribs cracked. He didn't even get a split lip. It was embarrassing, honestly, and he took it with a stoic kind of disdain that carried him through to the point where they slammed him into a chair and cuffed his hands behind his back.

_Cuffed._ With actual mechanical, metal _handcuffs_. If Felix hadn't already been unimpressed by the whole song and dance, that would have been enough to pitch him into full on professional disgust.

The two gorillas hit him around a few more times for some nebulous purpose he couldn't work out, but he didn't pay much attention to it. Felix's concentration was focused on picking the lock on the handcuffs, and by the time they were done "softening him up" or whatever it was they thought they were doing, he had gotten it open and was balancing the cuffs on his wrists to maintain the air of captivity. It was tempting to just knife them both and leave, but for the sake of Locus' stupid diversion and his half-assed plan, he knew he needed to put up with this hamfisted bullshit a little longer.

The muscle, such as it was, departed and was replaced a few minutes later with a guy who had enough air of authority about the way he carried himself that Felix assumed he was the one in charge. And _that_ made him the complaint department.

"What the fuck kind of amateur operation is this?" Felix demanded irritably before the guy had gotten halfway across the room. "Don't you assholes know you ask your questions and _then_ beat the shit out of the guy if he doesn't talk? You don't start with the beating. There's no incentive to cooperate." With a disgusted click of his tongue, he shook his head. "Jesus Christ. I want to talk to your supervisor. I deserve a better interrogation experience than this."

For a few seconds, the guy paused, not nearly good enough at his job to pretend that he wasn't nonplussed by the tirade. He recovered fast, but Felix caught the confused expression before he wiped it off his face and when he stopped in front of him and crossed his arms over his chest, the aura of authority didn't feel quite as strong anymore.

"So start talking," he ordered as authoritatively as he probably could. It was a better effort than his underlings had made throughout the sorry affair, but Felix wasn't impressed.

"Really?" He couldn't have hid the disdain if he'd wanted to and by this point, he really didn't. "That's what you're going with?" Both eyebrows rose, causing the faintest twinge of discomfort as bruised muscles in his cheek pulled. Felix ignored it. "You want to give me a little direction here or do you want to hear about that time I got an A on my second grade spelling test?"

The second try was a little better. "What are you doing here?"

Felix snorted in contempt. "Getting beat up by a bunch of incompetent idiots."

His sarcasm got him an open-handed slap to the face. "In the building," Dipshit clarified, as if by this point this farce of an interrogation wasn't a totally lost cause.

Unfortunately for his valiant effort to be a discount Bond villain, he was dealing with Felix. And Felix had _never_ been cowed by a slap. "Right now?" He didn't even bother working the sting out of his jaw. "I'm tied to a chair."

A second hit snapped his head to the side so hard he bit the inside of his cheek. "Before this."

Rolling his jaw—that one had actually hurt and it paid to show a little breakdown of control—Felix slowly turned his head back toward the guy. He eyed him for a moment, pretending to mull it over. "Doing a job," he finally said, making it sound like it was being pulled from him grudgingly.

"What job?"

He almost ruined the whole charade by throwing up his hands in frustration. "Oh my fucking god. _Really?_ I'm going to have to do this for you? Holy shit."

His inept interrogator was looking at him like he had just dissolved into Lekgolos all over the floor. It was almost comical. Felix probably would have been laughing in the asshole's face if he wasn't so annoyed by the way the mission had gone.

"Let me guess," he continued in judgmental disapproval. "This is your first time, isn't it? You watched some actions movies, you’re thinking okay, I saw this once in that one about the spy, I know what to do. Well, little secret, this isn't a movie, buddy. You start with the basics. You say, who are you? And I say, Felix. And then you say...?" Felix lifted his eyebrows in prompting encouragement.

"Felix who?"

"No." Felix sighed so heavily that it jostled the handcuffs. If Locus was still listening in, and he was sure that he was, he could easily imagine him gritting his teeth in anger over Felix so easily giving his name. But then Locus had no sense of showmanship or artistry. "You say, who do you work for?" He paused, met Dipshit's eyes, and nodded. "Go on. Try it."

A real interrogator would have gotten fed up with his patronizing tone at the start. Felix could see that it was starting to bother him a little, but not nearly enough to make him snap. For a second he thought he was going to now, but all he got was a brief narrowing of the guy's eyes.

"Who do you work for?"

"Myself."

This time, he didn't need to offer any helpful prompts. "What does that mean?"

"Better." He nodded approvingly, like Dipshit was a dog who had just preformed a cute trick. "It means I'm a merc. You're not in the business. _Obviously._ ” Both his tone and the look he gave the guy were disgustedly disappointed, like anyone who was anyone knew the business.

“So a little background on the job description,” he continued expansively. “I get paid to do shit for people. You want someone taken out? You call me. You want something blown up? Me. You want a game rigged, a bank robbed, someone to be late for a meeting, a diversion, a catastrophe, a holocaust, whatever, you contact me. You give me the details. You give me the payment." The pride that filtered into his voice wasn't affected. "And I make the magic happen."

"So who paid you?"

Trying to emulate a shrug, he rocked his head back and forth. "Didn't ask for a name."

"You didn't ask for a name," Dipshit repeated dryly.

Felix rolled his eyes at him, then deliberately focused his attention on the guy's left ear. "Later, maybe give your flunky here some training on how professionals run their business, huh? This is embarrassing and it isn't reflecting very well on you or your operation."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

He met Dipshit's constipated glare with a look of bland amusement. "You're kidding, right? You're wearing an earpiece. It's small, sure, but anyone with a brain knows to look for them. So _I_ know your boss is listening in and since I'm guessing you're not going to faithfully report my critique of your performance once we're done here, I figured I'd do it myself."  

Dipshit opened his mouth, probably in rebuttal, maybe to tell him to shut the fuck up before punching him. Felix didn't know, didn't care, and didn't give him the opportunity. He kept talking, voice taking on a tone of impatience.

"I'm not running a dating service here. I'm not paid to get to know the client first before I decide if I want the money. I'm paid to do the job. What the fuck do I care who's giving me the money or why? It's money." Although he was needling the guy, and by extension Alvaro, Felix wasn't lying. That _was_ how he felt about it.

"What's the job?" Dipshit asked through clenched teeth, visibly losing patience.

_Gotcha, motherfucker,_ Felix thought triumphantly. "Right now, the job's apparently teaching a guy how to interrogate a fucking prisoner." Raising his voice so the man on the other end of Dipshit's earpiece could hear him, he added, "I'll send you my bill once we're done." 

It wasn't a slap this time. It was a punch that made spots dance across his vision before it started to tunnel. For a few precarious seconds, he thought it was going to knock him out, but the encroaching darkness slowly faded instead of getting worse. Something wet was sliding down the side of his face and he could taste blood in his mouth.

Instead of cowering like he knew he was meant to be doing, Felix smiled and singsonged as obnoxiously as possible, "Use your words."

From the contortions currently twisting Dipshit's face, it looked like he was going to combust. "What job did you accept?" he asked, biting off every word.

Tempting though it was to keep dragging it out, he wasn't sure how far he could push before he was forced to kill the guy. "Find the defense contracts," Felix responded after a few seconds' worth of silence.

"Was killing our people part of that job?" It was supposed to be another casual question, but from the way he asked and the tension in the set of his mouth, Felix could tell that he'd struck a nerve. A personal one. Someone he’d killed on his minor rampage had meant something to the man. A friend? A lover? It didn’t matter, there wasn’t any coming back from the dead—without temporal inference—and Felix wouldn’t have felt any remorse about it anyway, but it was always nice to know that his actions had further reaching effects than just the immediate. 

With a vindictive kind of glee, he tipped his head in another shrug, ignoring the way the room started to swim around the edges. "Didn't matter. I had creative license."

That was _not_ what the guy wanted to hear. His expression darkened and in the periphery of Felix’s vision, he saw his hands clench. “For what?”

Maybe the grief was manifesting as deafness. “To find the defense contracts by whatever means necessary,” he reiterated.

“Why?”

In the land of no imagination, this idiot was apparently king. “Who the fuck knows? If I had to hazard a guess, your boss has got some competition and the competition wants to win. Or...” He dragged the word out for a few beats too long, schooling his face into an expression of thoughtful inspiration. “You guys manufacture weapons, right? Maybe one of the Covenant splinter groups doesn’t want you to arm their enemies.” He paused, frowning. “That’d be a real bitch, wouldn’t it?”

It was a cheap shot. The war hadn’t been over long enough for anyone’s memories to dull. The UNSC might have allied with the Sangheili, but no one had forgotten the shadow of the Covenant ships falling over the land before the glassing started. No one had forgotten the brutality of the Jiralhanae shocktroops or the fear of trying to flee a Kig-Yar sniper and seeing unlucky friends and strangers dropping like stones. Hatred, anger, sorrow, fear—the Covenant had become the boogeyman now, haunting the people who’d been alive to witness what it had done and being used to scare children growing up in the aftermath.

Felix could see it working its magic on his interrogator. The shadows of some tragedy or other gathered in his eyes. Tightness worked its way into his face. There was no way of knowing what kind of reaction Alvaro was having on the other end of that earpiece, but Felix was willing to bet an exorbitant sum of money that it wasn’t dismissive. The competitor angle was legitimate enough that it could stand on its own as a valid explanation for everything that had happened to Alvaro since Locus had set out to bring him down. But throwing a remnant of the Covenant into it would cast doubt, and once planted, there was no way Alvaro was going to be able to ignore it. The head of a weapons manufacturer who engaged in shady practices, played the government against its enemies, and developed secret tools of mass destruction would by necessity need to be paranoid as fuck. And this would play on that rather nicely.

"But you don't know?"

"No," Felix reiterated irritably. "Said that already, didn't I? Knowing who pays me isn't part of the job. Jesus Christ. You need to hear that in some other language before you get it?"

Dipshit rolled his eyes. "So how's it work?"

That was just vague enough that Felix didn't know what he was talking about. "How does what work? Getting paid?"

"Contracting you for a job."

Frowning, Felix stared at him uncertainly. It wasn't feigned. Either someone—the guy or Alvaro—was just curious about how the mercenary underworld worked or he was being offered a job. In context, neither made any damn sense. It was, without a doubt, the sloppiest, most aimless interrogation to which Felix had ever been subjected. He was starting to get bored with it, and unfortunately for even his best laid plans, when he got bored, shit went off the rails really fucking fast.

He heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Okay, look, here's how it works. Pay attention, both of you, because I'm only explaining this shit once. People like me, we aren't in the phone book. You put the word out. You say the right thing to the right guy or leave the right message in the right place online. We hear about it, we take an interest, we contact you. Or maybe one of us comes to kill you and you make the kind of offer that will make even the best of us switch sides. However it happens, you put the money where we tell you to put it, and we do the job."

From the look on the guy's face, that wasn't how he was envisioning it worked. Felix shook his head at him. "Life's not one big movie, yeah? Only amateurs have clandestine meetings in smoky bars."

Dipshit took the insult in stride, going so far as to raise an eyebrow and smirk at him. "I would've thought only amateurs gave their name too, but you did it pretty easily."

Felix laughed outright at that. It was a loud, sharp bark of sound that the guy obviously wasn't expecting. He flinched a little, the smirk slipping from his face. It was Felix's turn to smirk then; he did it broadly as he leaned forward in the chair. "If you think I didn't do that deliberately, you aren't worth the credits you're being paid."

Although he hadn't forgotten that the comms channel with Locus was open, Felix wasn't really thinking about it either. It was an inconsequential background detail that wasn't worth paying attention to until it became an asset. And it didn't become one until Locus' voice abruptly broke its silence.

"ETA ten minutes," he said without preamble. "Can you make it?"

_Fucking finally_. If Felix had less control of himself, he would have sighed in relief. As it was, he didn't so much as blink. He didn't answer Locus directly either. Locus was—had been, at least—a smart, observant guy. He could glean the answer from what he heard through the comms. Besides which, there was no way to do it without alerting the guard or his employer that there was more to the attack than there appeared to be.

"Though honestly, between you and me..." Felix sprang up off the chair as he spoke, lunging for his idiot interrogator at the same time as he swung his arm—handcuffs caught in his hand—around. If the guy had been standing back further, he might have avoided being struck by the cuffs. Because he'd thought himself safe and his captive contained, he wasn't and took the thing right up the side of his face. It knocked him back, caused him to stagger off-balance, and by that time Felix was slitting his throat. "You really, _really_ weren't."

The body dropped to the floor with an audible thud, the handcuffs following a moment later with a rattling _clink_. Ignoring the fresh blood spattered across the front of his stolen windbreaker and down the side of his too-large pants, Felix knelt beside the corpse for a few seconds to grab the guy's gun and pluck the earpiece from his ear.

"Word of advice?" he advised the earpiece as he straightened up. "Hire better help. This job was a waste of my talent."

Dropping the earpiece to the ground, Felix smashed with the heel of his shoe and made his way out of the room. There was a maintenance accessway a few meters down the hall. He made a beeline there, alert for sounds of pursuit, and pried the panel off the wall, more concerned with speed than the racket he was making. Either the dead guard's buddies were on a coffee break or the sudden loss of control over the situation had surprised Alvaro just long enough to delay a call for backup.  Whatever the case, no one appeared to stop Felix from slipping into the access corridor and he encountered no opposition as he hurried toward the nearest exit out of the building.

Adrenaline kept him moving swiftly, unhindered by his body's protests after the less than hospitable treatment it had gotten in the care of Alvaro's goons. There was a headache trying to gain a strong enough hold to split his head open. His stomach ached in a most unpleasant way. Once or twice, as he nimbly jumped down flights of stairs, he had the distant sensation that he might throw up. And somewhere along the line he must have twisted his ankle, because it kept tossing twinges of pain up his leg. But exiting the building before Locus blew it up was a more pressing priority and Felix managed to ignore the whole mess in the interest of self preservation.

He elbowed open an exterior door out of the stairwell and paused for a few seconds in the doorway, gulping in huge lungfuls of air as he scanned the outside of the building. It was still dark, though the sky was beginning to lighten a little bit. What he could see of the parking lot was mostly empty. Knowing Alvaro's business practices the way he did and the general attitude toward police on Gilgamesh, he wasn't terribly surprised to see a complete lack of cops crowding up in preparation of storming the building and saving the day. He also didn't see the approaching headlights of the stolen truck, but if his internal clock was still functioning _at all_ , he knew that he should have been seeing something.

"Where are you?" Not certain if there were surveillance cameras outside feeding footage to some off-site server, he made sure to keep his voice low and his mouth still.

"Waiting for you," came Locus' calm voice.

"That's not—" Felix slowly trailed off into silence as he realized what he was seeing. The wrong side of the goddamn facility. "Motherfucker."

"Detonation in thirty seconds." Was it his imagination or did Locus sound slightly tenser than he had a second ago?

He was already running, pelting away from the building and across the parking lot as fast as his legs could carry him. After so long in the ability-enhancing armor, it didn't feel fast enough. How he'd gotten turned around, he didn't know, but it certainly wasn't the first time he'd fucked up orienting himself on the escape route. Usually, though, it was because he wasn't paying attention. This time, he had been.

_I didn't avoid death traveling to the future just to get blown up in one of Locus' stupid fucking save the universe plans._ Gritting his teeth, Felix ran faster, dodging around the rear of a truck and then, a dozen or so meters further on, vaulting over the hood of a car he didn't want to waste time going around. _Shrapnel. It's all going to be shrapnel soon. I need cover._

The rendezvous where he should have been was located in a depression on the far side of a high-sloped hill on the southern end of the facility's property. It was a natural buffer that would absorb the blast, however strong it ended up being, and protect those taking shelter in it. On the northern side, there weren't many options to pick from and Felix's internal clock was rapidly counting down. It didn't help that it was still too dark to see properly and he didn't have Locus' anal-retentive attention to detail to helpfully supply the full layout of the property and a five kilometer radius of the surrounding landscape.

Or that shortly after entering the grassy area adjacent to the parking lot, Felix stepped into a shallow hole he couldn't see and the resulting uncontrolled stumble at his current velocity stole his balance and sent him flying. 

Which was, poetically enough, when the timer evidently hit zero. The facility went up in an explosion so powerful that the heat of it rolled out away from the detonation like a tidal wave. A deafening bang preceded it, the explosions timed so precisely that there was no way to distinguish when the truck exploded and when the charges within the building went off.

But luck must have finally taken pity on his sad set of shitty circumstances. Instead of getting caught in the expanding wall of fire or narrowly escaping it only to land flat on his face and smash his nose, Felix went rolling down a moderate incline, only banging off of rocks twice, and ended up in a stream. It wasn't very deep, not nearly enough to submerge himself, but any water was better than no water. He landed on his side in a ball, winded, sore, and a little dazed.

His ears were ringing and when he finally managed to get his breath back, he inhaled a nose full of water that sent him into a fit of coughing. It made his ribs ache and his back twinge in a way that told him that he'd gotten singed in the explosion. How badly, he didn't know. Everything was still kind of hazy and far away, sound and sensation muted enough that it seemed a little like it was happening to someone else.

Except for Locus shouting in his ear.

" _Felix!_ " Was he angry? Impatient? Felix wasn't sure. It sounded like both as much as it didn't, which didn't make any sense. But then, nothing was making sense anymore. Being unable to correctly interpret Locus was just par for the course now. "Answer me!"

Contrariness reared its head, urging him to ignore the demand entirely. It would serve Locus right for all the stupid shit he'd done. But contrariness, powerful though it was, was no match for the involuntary groan that escaped him as Felix shoved himself upright from his water-logged sprawl.

"Felix!" Locus snapped again. "Where are you?"

"Oh my god, stop yelling." Felix rubbed at his eyes, wiping the water away, and felt gingerly around at his head. It was impossible to tell what was blood and what wasn't. "I'm not completely deaf yet and I'd like to keep it that way."

"What happened?"

"You tell me." It took some coaxing, but Felix convinced his legs and his back to work together to stand up. His head started to swim alarmingly almost immediately, forcing him to close his eyes and take a few slow, deep breaths. The rank smell, a combination of chemicals and burning electrical equipment, wafting over from the remains of the facility didn't help quell the rising sense of nausea churning in his gut. "But do it quietly. Very quietly." 

There was a long moment of uninterrupted dull noise ringing in his ears. Felix took advantage of it by carefully getting out of the stream and heading in what he hoped was the direction of the Pelican. At this point, he was starting to mistrust his internal compass.

"How badly are you injured?" Locus asked finally, though he made up for it by keeping his voice low and quiet.

The truth was, Felix didn't know. He wasn't drowning in agony and everything was working insofar as he was aware, so he knew none of it was life-threatening. But he also knew that he was bleeding, that all was not right on the body front, and that he was probably in shock. It wasn't the first time he had experienced it and unless he gave up his lifestyle and retired to a monotonous life by the sea building rocking chairs and doing crossword puzzles for fun, he had a feeling he would probably go through it again. Possibly many times. But because he had navigated these weird episodes before, he knew how to take full advantage of them. And the first order of business was getting back to the Pelican so he could sit down before the haze lifted and the pain set in.

"Felix!" The sharp sound of Locus' voice, no longer pitched at an acceptably quiet level, snapped him out of vague blankness that had settled over his thoughts.

"Huh?"

"Your injuries." It sounded like he was speaking through clenched teeth. "How bad are they?"

He took a minute to consider it, but he was no closer to a real answer than he had been the first time. "I'm on my way back to the Pelican." That was going to have to suffice. Locus could extrapolate the fact that he wasn't bleeding out or burned to a crisp from that. "I think."

"You think," came the dry echo.

"It's dark and I think my eye is swelling shut," Felix grumbled back at him. "Cut me some fucking slack."

"Where are you?"

It hurt in weird places to do it, but the huge sigh Felix gave at the question still felt cathartic. "Near a parking lot. And a stream." 

After about a minute, Locus responded. "Sixty meters. There should be trees to your left."

Felix could see plenty of large, shadowy blobs against the faintly lighter darkness of the shadows being thrown by the fire still burning merrily behind him. It occurred to him then that his eye really was swelling up and that visibility was going to be an issue sooner than later. _Stupid fucking Locus and his stupid fucking mission._

"If by trees you mean a big dark blob, sure. I see it."

That was probably too inaccurate for Locus' anal attention to detail. He didn't give him shit over it, though. Surprisingly. "It's there. About twelve meters in. I'm on my way now."

A hot shower. Twelve hours of sleep. Maybe some bourbon. Maybe a lot of bourbon. Not necessarily in that order. The Pelican was still a considerable distance away, but already Felix was fantasizing about the rest and relaxation he was going to soak up as soon as they got back to Locus' penthouse lair. A week of nothing but lying around in bed. Maybe two. Locus could go play savior of the universe by himself.

Felix managed to find the Pelican before his eye swelled shut completely _and_ before Locus got back, which wasn't as much of a victory as he decided that it was but he didn't care. He was first. Whether his original location was closer than the rendezvous was irrelevant where inflating his ego was concerned. 

Dragging himself into the hangar, he promptly collapsed into the nearest seat. The sharp burst of pain across his back as it hit the backrest told him that he'd been a little more singed than he thought and with a grumble of irritation, Felix slumped sideways instead. He was still sitting there like a passed out drunk when Locus entered the Pelican, eyes closed and head resting against the shoulder straps. He knew Locus was staring at him before he heard the footsteps stop, the weight of his gaze was too suffocating to mistake, but in a burst of contrary defiance, he decided to ignore him.

"Felix?" It apparently worked too well, because there was something cautious and wary about Locus' tone. After a few seconds' pause, the footsteps started again, getting louder as they got closer. "Felix."

_Jesus Christ, he thinks I'm dead._ The realization struck him so hard he almost opened his eyes in pure affront. Never mind that Locus had apparently watched the idiotic sim troopers kill him and had lowered his expectations of what Felix could survive. It was still insulting that he thought a stupid explosion was enough to take him out.

" _Felix."_ It was the urgency of that hiss that made him refrain from opening his eyes, curious to see how far this particular crazy train was going to go. But when he felt Locus' fingers pressing against his throat, feeling for a pulse, he had to put the brakes on it. 

"Stop it." The low mumble as he blindly batted Locus' hand away wasn't affected. "M'trying to sleep."

Locus stopped touching him, but he didn't go away. He just stood there radiating some kind of weirdass disapproval that was so strong Felix didn’t have to see him to know the expression that he was wearing. “Do you need the med kit?”

“No, _Mom_.” The sarcastic retort was out of his mouth before he consciously considered making it, but he didn’t feel any regret. “Can we get going or do you just want to stand there asking stupid questions?”

When he got nothing except silence for an answer, he thought maybe Locus was choosing option two. Then, after it drug on for a little too long, he heard a huffed sigh, followed by the footsteps heading off to the front of the Pelican. _Fucking finally_. He took a deep breath, slowly let it out, and set about trying to become one with the uncomfortable seat.

Maybe he actually slept on the trip back. Maybe he just fell into a kind of blank torpor. Time passed quickly, which was all that really mattered to him. Before he knew it, he was being roused out of whatever it was by the Pelican’s landing. Only one eye opened and the sitting up process was an arduous affair he nearly gave up on once his body began registering every complaint it had. He was sitting there recuperating, breathing a little too hard from the exertion, when Locus reappeared beside him.

“Come on.” Without waiting for a response, he hauled Felix to his feet. The manhandling was so unexpected that he squawked in protest, but Locus ignored him. Just like he ignored the weak, ineffective struggle Felix made to shove him away. “Walk or I carry you.”

There was no way in hell he was suffering through the indignity of Locus carrying him anywhere. Even if his legs had been blown off, he would have insisted that he could walk just fine. He stopped struggling, let Locus rearrange his arm over his shoulders for the additional support _that he didn’t need_ , and started walking. He didn’t say anything for the duration of the descent from the roof. A litany of complaints ran through his mind, but he knew his uncharacteristic silence was bothering Locus, so he resisted temptation and kept his mouth shut. Every few seconds, he could see Locus glancing at him, though he didn’t acknowledge that either. 

Instead of depositing him in his room as soon as they entered the penthouse like he was hoping, Locus carted him over to the couch. When Felix made no motion to sit on his own, he got carefully shoved down onto it. Opening his mouth to protest, he was cut off by a stern glare and a firm, “Stay put.” 

Felix glowered back at him. “Let me die in peace.” 

Locus rolled his eyes. “You aren’t dying.”

One side of Felix’s face wasn’t cooperating, but the other obligingly tossed up an eyebrow when he tried to lift them both. “I guess you’re the expert on that, huh?” 

The glare turned withering, before Locus turned and walked away. 

_Point for me_ , Felix thought in triumph. And now that Locus wasn’t hovering over him like a hen, he could retreat to his room. It was a fine plan, but when Felix braced his hands on the couch cushion and started trying to lever himself back onto his feet, he discovered that the furniture had turned into a black hole when he wasn’t paying attention. The stuffing shifted under his hands, disrupting his leverage, and the back of the couch seemed to be hellbent on devouring him. He fussed with it for a minute, going so far as to try to pull himself out of it with the aid of the armrest, but it felt like that just made him sink further into it. 

Locus returned in the middle of the losing battle and stood there a few paces away, watching and clearly judging him. About to snap at him, Felix noticed that he was holding something in his hands. 

“What is that?” As soon as he asked, he knew. “Biofoam?” Shaking his head in abject denial, Felix pushed back into the couch. But now it didn’t seem to want him anymore and unhelpfully didn’t shield him from the approaching horror. “Oh no. Get that shit away from me. I still have nightmares about it.” 

It didn’t work. Locus kept advancing, the box held out in front of him like a shield. “It’s not biofoam.” 

Felix didn’t believe him, suspiciously eyeing the box like it was going to explode. “Then what is it? Drugs?” He shot Locus a sarcastic glance. “Are you shooting up some new Jiralhanae smack now too?” 

Sighing, Locus sat down beside him. “I’m going to smack _you_ in a minute.” 

“You and everybody else today.” Not to be penned in by a traitorous sofa and a backstabbing asshole, Felix sought escape over the armrest. 

Before he got his body to respond to his urgent demands that it ignore its injuries and fling itself onto the floor, Locus caught his forearm. “Felix.” 

Felix jerked his arm away. “No.” 

“You’re going to feel worse tomorrow,” he cautioned. 

“I’d rather suffer than go through that again,” Felix insisted stubbornly. 

Because he was operating on limited resources, he couldn’t be _completely_ sure that Locus rolled his eyes again right then, but he felt the suspicion was warranted. “It isn’t biofoam!” 

“It looks like it!” 

“Well, it isn’t.” 

Even if Locus hadn’t left him to die so he could run off and fuck Freelancers, there was no way in hell Felix would have believed him. “Are you lying?” 

“No.” 

It was a trick question. Felix immediately followed it up with a suspicious, “Would you tell me if you were?” 

Locus didn’t say anything to that. He just tried to stare him down, but with only one of Felix’s eyes open, it was easy to let his functional eye unfocus. With all of that impatient irritation softened to a dull haze, he could meet it with oblivious serenity. It was the kind of stare-off that could last hours, provided Felix’s body didn’t give up the ghost and pass out, but Locus must have figured out that something was up. 

“It’s better than biofoam,” he said, sounding like he was trying to raise a white flag in the middle of an active battlefield. “It’s new.” And then he paused. It was one of those pauses that happened whenever Locus conversationally overextended himself, made a mistake of some sort, and then tried desperately to mitigate it. “Experimental.” 

That didn’t help. In fact, it made it worse. Felix shook his head. “No. _No._ ” 

“It doesn’t hurt.” 

_Bullshit._ “Have you used it?” 

“Yes.” It was delivered so firmly and immediately that Felix knew he was telling the truth. But then he blew it. Again. “It just itched.” 

“It itches,” Felix repeated slowly. 

“Yes.” 

“Like fire ants biting the shit out of you?” 

“No.” 

“An acid bath?” If he kept guessing, he knew he would eventually land on whatever experience Locus was trying to conceal. 

“Itching doesn’t hurt.”

“Actual itching, no.” They could agree on that. “Your definition? Who the fuck knows.” 

There were many times when Felix had decided to be an obstinate pain in the ass for no reason other than boredom, contrariness, or because provoking Locus into losing his patience never lost its entertainment value. This wasn’t one of those times. Felix was no stranger to pain. He’d been shot, stabbed, burned, strangled, and beaten more than once in his life. Once, when he was still a new recruit and not yet well-versed in the ways of battle, he’d been captured and tortured. But none of that was like taking a shot of biofoam to the site of an injury and Locus knew it. He’d had to use it before too. 

_“Rather take a plasma grenade to the face than use that shit,”_ Private Second Class Johnson had said to him once, when they’d been trying to clear a Covenant force from a besieged hospital in New Alexandria. Then, three minutes later in the most concrete example of the old _be careful what you wish for_ adage Felix had ever witnessed, an Unggoy had unexpectedly run into the stairwell with a live plasma grenade in each hand and blown PV2 Johnson to bits. 

At the time, after coming out of the doorway he’d ducked into for cover and shooting the Grunt, Felix had located the biggest smear left of Johnson, clicked his tongue, and said disparagingly, _“Should’ve taken the biofoam._ ” 

The memory, long buried and as incompletely forgotten as any of his memories of the war were, resurfaced now. Johnson had been a fuckup and a shitty soldier, but in the moment, Felix thought maybe he could sympathize with the sentiment, even if he would never be able to sympathize with the man. A quick, relatively painless death would be preferable to what always felt like an eternity of millions of fiery, razor-legged ants crawling around in his insides. 

"You're getting the injection," Locus said, a little too calmly for Felix's liking, as he opened the case and withdrew a vial of strange golden liquid and a vaguely pistol-like injector. 

"Hell no I'm not." 

"There isn't time to wait for you to heal normally," he continued on as if he hadn't heard Felix's vehement protest. He slid the vial into the injector with a click that sounded just like a clip sliding into a firearm. "Hold still or it's going to hurt." 

"Don't you fucking—" He cut off abruptly as Locus pushed the point of the injector against the side of his neck. Too slow to jerk away, he hissed as the needle jabbed him and deposited a flood of oddly warm liquid under his skin. " _Asshole._ " 

Ignoring him, Locus settled back into his space, disassembled the injector, and put it back into the case. “Give it a few minutes.”

_As if I can do anything else, you son of a bitch._ Felix glowered balefully at him as he braced for whatever terrible agony was going to light up his veins. Because it was coming. He was sure of it. He could track the progress of whatever it was as it moved through his body by the bizarre warmth it left in its wake. When it began to warm his face, he tensed, waiting for warmth to turn to burning, but all it did was tingle. _That_ got stronger, though it never became the sharp stabbing of the biofoam. It just... _itched_. 

Refusing to give Locus the satisfaction of seeing him trying to alleviate it, Felix kept his hands on his lap and his scowl firmly in place. Internally, however, he was cataloguing all of the injuries he’d sustained and it was a lot more than he’d been expecting. Because wherever there was damage, the warmth and tingling itch settled. He was expecting it across his cheek, around his swollen eye, and the split lip, but not along his jaw or up into his hair or around to the back of his head. And that was just his head. 

After about a minute, give or take a few seconds, the warmth and the itch faded, only to be picked up in other places as the serum reached the sites of further injuries. His back. His chest and abdomen. His ankle. The left side of his hip. 

In the aftermath of that wave of weird sensation, the skin wasn’t pulling as tightly across his face as it had been and when he made the attempt to open his eye, it was successful. He could lean back against the couch without discomfort and it didn’t ache in strange places whenever he took a breath. And the pain he warily kept expecting never came. 

“The bruising should be gone by tomorrow,” Locus said mildly, evidently remembering enough about Felix and how he responded to Locus getting smug not to ask if he was feeling better.

“If it’s such a miracle drug, why’s it still experimental?” The question wasn’t quite as combative as it could have been, but Felix also wasn’t willing to give him a chance to gloat. “And how’d you get it?”

“An anonymous source within ONI supplied it,” Locus replied, further demonstrating that he’d lost all fucking sense. Locus, the paranoid supreme, was taking _experimental drugs_ from an _anonymous source_ within one of the shadiest operations Felix had encountered during his decades’ long career as a professional criminal. He was opening his mouth, presumably to answer the other question, but Felix cut him off.

“Exactly how many anonymous sources are you trusting with your life these days? Because I’m starting to lose track.” 

“This one has been vetted.”

Felix stared at him. “How do you vet someone who’s anonymous?” 

An expression that might have been vague embarrassment passed fleetingly across Locus’ face. _Yeah,_ Felix thought dryly as he glimpsed it. _You’re being fucking stupid and you know it._ “I’ve worked with this source for a few years. The intel and equipment provided is sound.” 

One piece of this fucked up broken puzzle slid into place. “The cloaking device for your Pelican and that mask thing for your face. You got them from the same person.” 

Locus nodded. “Yes.” 

The bitch of it was, he couldn’t say if that made him feel better or worse. “So, what, you’re the Three Amigos? You, your pet Freelancer, and this guy?” 

Like a cloud passing over the sun and shadowing the land beneath it, Locus’ expression immediately grew pinched. “No. My source within ONI has nothing to do with Washington.”

“Like to keep your professional and personal lives separate, huh?” Felix couldn’t resist sneering at him. 

Since arriving in his personal Twilight Zone, Felix had noticed that jabs at Wash and Locus’ relationship with him resulted in varying levels of exasperation, anger, and frustration. He was expecting more of the same with this latest comment. What he got instead was a long look right in the eyes and a quiet, “I haven’t had a personal life in years.”  

There were a few ways Felix could take that and all of them effectively shut down the conversation. Because Locus couldn’t mean what it sounded like he meant. And if he _did_ , then... Then Felix didn’t know what to think and didn’t want to find out. 

“Why is the drug still experimental?” It was the only way out he could take that didn’t require hauling himself up off the couch and escaping into his room.

Locus knew what he was doing. He had to. Evidence of it was in the faintly knowing twist to his mouth. But he didn’t call him out for it. “It still causes spontaneous combustion in seventeen percent of users,” he answered blandly.

It was an extraordinarily well-kept secret that despite appearances, Locus _did_ possess a sense of humor. Felix had encountered it in the wild too many times to believe it a fluke or trick of the mind. That _could_ have been a joke. It was delivered as dryly as any of Locus’ jokes. But Felix knew in the marrow of his bones that it wasn’t.

“ _And you used it on me?!_ ”

All he got for his outrage was an unapologetic shrug. “Research suggests those adversely affected are already in poor health prior to sustaining injuries. You are not in poor health." 

“That’s beside the fucking point!” 

Locus remained unmoved. “As I’ve already told you, I’ve used it too.”

_It’s like you set this shit up for me on purpose._ “There are a lot of things you’ve done that I haven’t.”

From the pained way Locus’ face momentarily scrunched in on itself, Felix knew the barb had found its mark. “I meant that I wouldn’t have subjected you to a risk I hadn’t taken and you know it.”

He could have said it. The spiteful part of him wanted to say it so badly that it took actual effort not to speak the words. He didn’t know why he didn’t. Locus deserved all the flak he got for what he'd done. But instead of voicing it, Felix just lifted his eyebrows. Locus read the intention behind it and frowned at him. 

It was going to turn into a fight. Felix could see it coming as clearly as if he’d suddenly developed precognition. He was pretty sure Locus knew it too, if the way he was tensing was any indication. For a moment, Felix entertained the idea with poisonous glee, wanting nothing more than to rip into him and tear him apart. But he was so fucking tired. Not just of the problems with Locus and his new circumstances, which he certainly was, but also physically. He hadn’t gotten that much sleep last night and while the mystery miracle drug was helpful, it didn’t provide energy or otherwise counteract exhaustion. 

“I’m going to get cleaned up.” Felix’s abrupt announcement was followed by shoving himself up from the couch. He tried to console his bruised ego with the fact that this wasn’t a retreat but a strategic repositioning for further battles to come, but it didn’t buy it and he couldn’t blame it. “Then I’m going to sleep for a week. Unless the building catches fire, don’t bother me.”

No doubt Locus wanted to say something, but Felix was already walking away. He didn’t look back and he didn’t wait for confirmation or rebuttal. And by the time Locus got his thoughts sorted out enough to respond, he was already gone.

* * *

A long shower, a change of clothes, and about fifteen hours of uninterrupted sleep did wonders. Another shower and a second change of clothes did even more, and by the time Felix emerged from his room looking for food, he felt marginally human again. He could have gone out and gotten something to eat from a nearby restaurant, but he was too hungry to wait and he didn't feel like schmoozing his way into a free meal. Plus, with as big of a tightwad as Locus had always been—he used to call himself thrifty back when he hadn't decided personalities were for chumps, but Felix knew differently—he knew there was bound to be something in the penthouse.

Thankfully, Locus wasn't lurking around the living room or the kitchen when Felix emerged. Not that his presence would have stopped him from rummaging around in the cabinets like he owned the place, but it was nice not to have to come up with scathing remarks when he just wanted to eat in peace. What wasn't nice, however, was opening the refrigerator and discovering an abundance of raw ingredients that required cooking. He found more of the same in the cabinets. 

_Jesus Christ._ Scowling, Felix slammed the cabinet he was peering hopelessly into shut and turned back to the fridge in the hope that he'd overlooked something. _Why can't you have leftover takeout like normal people?_

The plethora of fruit, vegetables, and blocks of cheese was waiting for him when he opened the door, dashing the futile hope that a few slices of pizza had crawled in there while his back had been turned. _Goddamn it._ As he stood there drumming his fingers against the outside of the open door, he realized the disturbing truth. He was going to have to cook something himself.

"What do you want?"

Locus' quiet voice startled him out of his increasingly dire thoughts of a culinary apocalypse, but Felix was going to be damned if he gave him the satisfaction of seeing him flinch. He squashed the reaction before it could jerk his shoulders up and oh so slowly tossed a casual glance over his shoulder. "Food," he replied, as blandly as he could make his voice sound. 

Lifting his eyebrows toward the stray wisps of hair escaping his ponytail, Locus looked pointedly past him at the contents of the still-open fridge. 

"That can be eaten sometime in the foreseeable future," Felix continued with a huff of irritation. 

"There's a bar on the corner," Locus told him. 

From the tone of his voice, Felix gathered that he was meant to glean some sort of significant meaning from the remark. He didn't. Opting not to voice that breakdown of communication, he let his blank stare do the talking for him.

"They make good burgers."

Felix kept staring at him, knowing there had to be more to it than that and waiting for the rest. 

It seemed to be having a strange effect on Locus. He didn't get flustered, exactly. Felix had seen him flustered. This looked nothing like it. But there was a rigidity to the way he was holding himself that suggested he was on a meandering journey to getting there.

"I'll pay for it," he finally offered.

Ordinarily, Felix would have taken the money without a second thought. Now, he hesitated to be beholden to Locus in any way. Even where something as miniscule as owing him the cost of a burger was concerned. But he _was_ hungry and he knew that Locus wouldn't appreciate what he'd end up doing to the kitchen if he made his own dinner. Admittedly, that was incentive to muster up the effort to try, but for once the desire to take the easy way out defeated pettiness and spite. 

"Fine," he conceded gracelessly, holding out his hand for the money. 

Locus didn't produce his wallet. "I mean I'll come with you."

It took a few seconds for those four words to coalesce from a gibberish echo rattling around in his head into an intelligible phrase with actual meaning. For the duration, Felix stood there with his hand still outstretched, staring at Locus with incomprehension.

"You want to go to a bar," he finally hazarded uncertainly, sure that what he was _really_ saying was somehow getting lost in translation. 

"Yes," Locus confirmed simply.

"With me."

Now a note of exasperation seeped into Locus' voice. "Yes."

More clarification was necessary. "Now."

Locus gave him a dry stare. "Obviously."

It was possible that Locus abruptly donning a sombrero and serape and playing some ancient, traditional song on a vihuela in the middle of the kitchen would have flummoxed Felix more than this invitation to go to a bar together. Unlikely, but possible. Because Felix had been trying to get him into stereotypical Mexican attire for years and he was _sure_ he was starting to wear him down, despite Locus' constant refusal to do so, increasingly irritated assertions about how he hadn't been born on Earth and therefore wasn't Mexican in the first place, and insistence that Felix continuing to badger him about it was offensive to him, to actual Mexicans, and to humanity in general. And for all he knew, Future Locus had embraced his cultural heritage and was going around shaking maracas at people, handing out tacos, and chilling by cacti after long days of saving the universe. Or whatever Mexican people did in their free time; Felix didn't know and didn't really care. The reality was bound to be boring anyway. 

Voluntarily offering to visit a bar with him though, that was practically beyond the pale. Locus hated bars. More than that, he hated being in any bar that contained a drinking and probably soon to be intoxicated Felix. In the past, Felix had had to whine, cajole, and pester him into accompanying him into them. Now, if his hearing hadn't been damaged in the explosion and this wasn't all some auditory hallucination, Locus was offering of his own volition. 

"...Why?"

"I haven't eaten." It was a rational, reasonable thing for absolutely anyone who wasn't Locus to say.

Opening his eyes as wide as they would go, Felix nodded pointedly toward the refrigerator and the contents within it that the still open door was displaying to all and sundry. 

"And I'd like to speak with you," Locus continued mildly, as if he hadn't noticed.

There it was. That was the whole shoe store dropping in on his head. 

"Oh, for fuck's sake." Needing something to do with his hands, Felix slammed the fridge closed in disgust. "I want to enjoy my food. Not ruin it with work." 

"Not about the mission," came Locus' bland correction. 

Felix glared at him. "I don't want to talk about your fucking boyfriend either." 

Locus should have snapped at him for that. He was counting on it to derail the stupid idea so that he could escape the prospect of an evening of painful boredom. But instead of starting the argument that they both knew was coming, Locus just looked at him. "I can't talk about what I don't have." 

If there was some undercurrent of meaning there, Felix chose to ignore it. And the possibility that it existed at all. "Then what?" he pressed. 

He sighed. "I don't have an agenda, Felix." 

_When have you ever not had an agenda?_ He almost voiced the thought out loud. Almost tacked on a bit about color-coded labels and multiple addendums, too. But when he opened his mouth to deliver the sarcastic jab, all that came out was a sullen, "Whatever." 

In another life—one where he hadn't been betrayed—he might have looked toward the visit with a certain degree of enthusiastic determination to get Locus to loosen the fuck up a little and have some fun. Now he just wanted to get it over with so he could go back to pretending that Locus didn't exist. Trust the asshole to ruin something as pleasant as burgers. It was like the lamest superpower ever. 

"One word about him or the job and I'm gone," Felix told him mulishly. 

Locus didn't argue with him. He just nodded. 

Felix scowled at him. "After I stab you with my fork." And he meant every fucking word of that promise.

It was impossible to tell whether Locus took the threat seriously or not. His expression was impassively bland as he tipped his head toward the door. "Let's go." 

"Like that?" Felix jerked his chin toward Locus. "Isn't that a little casual for you?" 

Back in what had been Felix's present, he and Locus didn't go out much. They hadn't been able to be seen together for most of the Chorus mission, and even if they'd taken off their armor to move anonymously through the local population, there wasn't anywhere to go on the shitty planet worth a damn anyway. But prior to that, back when Locus hadn't completely lost his mind to his pursuit of ridiculous bullshit, they had. And whenever they'd gone anywhere, Locus had always taken pains to look _good._ So had Felix, of course. After all, what was the point of having a lot of money if it wasn't spent on expensive, well tailored clothes? But he had never been allergic to the occasional pair of jeans or t-shirt the way Locus had been. 

In the _actual_ present, jeans and a t-shirt were exactly what Locus was wearing. The shirt was plain and fitted and the jeans were dark and looked like he'd had them specially made for him, but there wasn't a button-down shirt or tie in sight. Even his shoes looked like the well-bred cousins of a pair of beat-up sneakers. 

Locus slanted him a wry glance that took in his own jeans and untucked t-shirt. "Would you rather be underdressed?" 

_I would rather you not go, but that doesn't seem to be an option, does it?_ Felix just rolled his eyes and stepped around him on his way out of the kitchen. "Whatever," he said for the second time in as many minutes. "I don't care." 

Felix took a brief detour into his room to grab a pair of shoes and his coat. When he emerged, he arrived at the door in time to see Locus shrugging into a leather jacket. It was the kind of look—leather jacket, tight jeans, loose and sloppy ponytail—Felix had been trying to get him into for _years_ , and now that it was coming too late, it turned out to be even hotter in reality than it had been in his imagination. A spark of arousal flared through him, twisting his stomach into a tight, uncomfortable knot. Refusing to acknowledge it for what it was, Felix elbowed his way past him without a word and stalked into the hallway. 

They didn't speak on the way to the bar. Locus kept pace with him in silence as Felix resolutely ignored his existence and fantasized about expending some of his jittery energy on knifing the assholes crowding the sidewalk and forcing him to walk around them. Most of them looked relatively poor and useless, but he thought he could have probably gotten a few hundred credits off of some of them. It would have made the trial of trying to have dinner with Locus marginally more tolerable, but there were too many potential witnesses to make it worthwhile. 

Once they got inside their destination, Locus stepped forward and led the way to a table in the back with familiar ease. Felix had half a mind to wander off and go sit at the bar by himself, but he had a feeling that Locus would ruin his pointless rebellion by abandoning the table and joining him. In a petty bid at punishment for it, he dropped heavily onto the booth along the wall, forcing Locus to take the less comfortable chair that put his back to the rest of the bar. _How's your paranoia gonna like that, asshole?_  

Either it didn't care or Locus was ignoring it, because he didn't react beyond lifting his eyebrows marginally in inquiry. "Bourbon or beer?" 

It probably shouldn't have bothered him that Locus remembered what he tended to drink with burgers, but it did. And because it did, Felix smiled sharply at him, all but baring his teeth. "Both." 

Locus didn't even blink. "The usual?" 

_That_ bothered him too. Felix eyed him with open suspicion, waiting for the rest of the joke, but Locus only looked at him expectantly, awaiting an answer. After a stubborn silence, he heaved a sigh. "Fine." 

And then, like the motherfucking fool he was, he watched Locus walk off toward the bar. He wasn't sure what he hated the most: the jeans, Locus for wearing them in the first place, or himself for being unable to tear his eyes away from treacherous bastard's ass. _This is going to be such a long night._ It probably would have been a lot less aggravating if all of him could get on board with hating Locus, but his libido either hadn’t received the same memo the rest of him had or it was stubbornly ignoring it for no reason other than to make him a conflicted, miserably frustrated ball of anger, resentment, and lust.

He was still futilely stewing when Locus returned, two fingers and the thumb of one hand wrapped around the necks of two bottles of beer and the other two fingers helping to brace two glasses filled with amber liquid. Thankfully, the number of beverages distracted both his eyes and his attention away from the jeans and the unintentional show they made of his former partner walking in any direction. As he eyed them in wary confusion, Locus set one bottle and one of the glasses in front of him—beer and bourbon, just like he’d asked for—and sat down in his chair, arranging the other two in front of himself to his liking. Locus drinking wasn’t new. Locus had never shied away from alcohol. But he rarely drank to excess the way Felix was prone to do and this seemed as uncharacteristically bizarre as the outfit.

“Too lazy to get up for a refill?” Felix gestured toward whatever was going on over on Locus’ side of the table.

Like there was nothing out of the ordinary about any of this, Locus took a casual sip of his beer. “Keeping up. 

Felix stared at him. “With _me_?” When Locus just looked at him like he thought he was an idiot for asking, he laughed out loud, the sound heavy with sarcasm. “There’s no way you’re doing that and you know it.”

Theoretically, he knew that Locus probably _could_ do it. One of the first things that had impressed Felix during the war was the way Locus could do just about anything if he really set his mind to it. If he wanted to now, he could probably drink Felix under the table and then carry him back to the penthouse while saying backwards a handful of human alphabets and one of the Sangheili ones without pause, mistake, or intoxicated slur of words just to be an insufferable asshole. But Locus didn’t _like_ drinking that much. He never had.

Shrugging blandly, Locus took another drink of beer and didn’t respond, which was probably the worst thing he could do in this situation if he really wanted Felix to drop it. 

“What is this?” 

Locus squinted at him. “What?” 

“This.” Felix gestured to him and his side of the table. “The clothes.” He ignored the deepening furrow of Locus’ brow at that one. “The booze. The visit. All of it. What’s the angle?” 

“There isn’t one,” Locus replied simply.

“There’s no angle,” Felix echoed back to him, carefully enunciating every word. 

“I told you, I wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?”

He got another shrug for that one. “It doesn't matter.” 

It was tempting to throw his bourbon in Locus’ face. Not wanting to waste it, Felix ground his teeth together instead. “The cryptic bullshit's gotta go.” First, because it was annoying as fuck. And second because it just emphasized how much of an influence Wash had on him and Felix _really_ didn’t want to start thinking about him before he ate. 

“I haven't spoken with you in years,” Locus said evenly. 

“What do you call this?” Felix challenged immediately. 

Locus volleyed it back just as fast. “Arguing.”

There wasn’t a good comeback for that and after a slight hesitation, Felix shut his mouth against the impulse to try to make one. Then, not wanting to appear to have conceded defeat, he busied himself with drinking his beer. It wasn’t fooling either of them, Locus had scored a win there and they both knew it, but despite the opportunity to gloat and rub his face in it, Locus didn’t needle him about his victory. 

After some time spent silently sipping his beer and watching him without overtly staring, Locus asked, "What do you think of it?"

The question drew Felix's attention away from the crowd of people by the bar he'd been watching for no reason other than to look at something other than Locus. "What do I think of what?"

"The future."

It was such a stupid question that it made him snort in legitimate amusement. "Seriously?" He cocked an eyebrow. Maybe the news was focused on other things and the people in various places of power had changed, but the future wasn't really any different than the past. There hadn't been enough time. "It hasn't been four hundred years."

Locus didn't respond. He only sat there, drinking and watching Felix over the rim of his bottle. In the dim light, his eyes were more grey than green, dark and filled with something Felix couldn't—and didn't want to—interpret. 

When it became obvious that Locus wasn't going to say anything, he grumbled, "What's it to you, anyway?"

"Curiosity." 

He could've given it some unnecessary thought or dithered around just to irritate Locus a little, but he didn't have to do the former and there wasn't much point to the latter. Not when there were so many other ways to get under his skin. "I hate it." 

"Why? 

That one was easy too. "Because everything's different." It was a direct contradiction to what he'd just said, but he didn't care. Everything that _mattered_ was unrecognizable. Technology, geography, the entertainment industry's most popular figure, what the Insurrection or the remnants of the Covenant were doing now, all of that bullshit was meaningless to him. He looked right at Locus, met those dark eyes and didn't look away. "Shit ought to be familiar, but it isn't." 

This time, the silence that fell over them felt heavier. Not quite tense, but it wasn't chummy and comfortable either. At least, it wasn't for him. He doubted Locus cared enough to notice. 

Finally, when he couldn't stand it anymore and was getting too close to finished with his beer, he threw it back at him. "What do _you_ think of it?" 

Locus had never been big on smiles. Possibly because his face was broken or he lost the manual and didn't know how to operate it properly, Felix was never quite certain. He didn't smile now either. But his mouth did something that looked like it was trying to muster the energy to make the attempt. "It's gotten more tolerable lately." 

_Oh, fuck you._ Felix glared at him, refusing to take the bait and break his own rule by saying the bastard's name out loud. It would have been more cathartic to yell at him, but sneering was the next best thing. "I'd pretend I'm happy for you, but I don't want to." 

The facial metamorphosis struggling to occur across the table collapsed in on itself like a dying star. Locus didn't frown at him, but he did stop trying to pretend that he had common emotional ground to share. Felix went back to draining his bottle and ignoring him, though his best effort wasn't enough to block out the sound of him sighing under his breath. _Burn in hell, you son of a bitch_. 

Felix wasn't wearing a watch and he hadn't procured a phone yet, so he had no way of knowing how long they sat there not talking to each other. He refused to look at Locus and from the feel of it, Locus refused to look at anything but him. It was one of the weirdest standoffs he'd ever participated in, and after a while, he decided that he was more comfortable when there were guns being pointed around with the threat of death heavily implied for the loser than this... whatever it was. 

"Felix." 

Grudgingly, Felix canted his head vaguely in Locus' direction and ever so slowly slanted a glance his way. It was all the acknowledgement he was going to get. 

Unperturbed by the unenthusiastic response, Locus asked quietly, "Can I tell you something?" 

_Fuck no._ Without having to try, Felix could already imagine a dozen _confessions_ Locus might be wanting to tell him that he absolutely did not want to hear. "If I say no, will that stop you?" It was as hopeful as it was hopeless. 

Pursing his lips, Locus stared him down.

_Yeah. It fucking figures._ "Is it one of the things I said you weren't allowed to talk about?" He knew it was a stupid question. Of course it was. Locus never fucking listened to him. 

"No." 

The sideways glance became a direct stare of flat distrust. Predictably, Locus met it without flinching. _Not going to win this one either._ "Fine." Felix sighed and waved his almost empty bottle at him. "Go ahead." 

In an effort to forestall any homicidal urges that might result from what he was about to hear, Felix quickly ran a few of the worst through his mind. _"I'm engaged._ _Wash and I are getting married. The sex is better with him. I wish I would have killed you sooner. Would you like to have a threesome?"_ It was a stupid plan. He could already feel the surge of anger encouraging him to smash the bottle and stab Locus' eyes out.

"I went back." It was the gravity of Locus' voice that pulled Felix out of the beginnings of an apoplectic episode, but even after he'd run the sounds through his mind a few times, he couldn't make them make sense. 

_Went back to what? Chorus? Who the fuck cares?_ Felix sure as hell didn't and he didn't want to sit there listening to Locus waxing nostalgic about where he'd killed his partner and met the love of his life. He gave him a flat, uncomprehending stare. 

And then Locus wiped it off his face with two wholly unexpected words. "To Reach." 

Calling it a flinch would have been kind. Felix recoiled like he'd been struck with a bat, the jerky movement so swift that he banged his elbow hard on the back of the booth. There was no possible way this conversation was going to end well. Although he couldn't explain where the suspicion came from or why he had it in the first place, Felix had a sickening sense that he knew where Locus was heading with this. 

So he had only himself to blame for opening his mouth and asking warily, "Why?" 

"After Chorus..." Locus started, only to trail off and let his gaze drift down to the bottle in his hand. He looked to be struggling with what he wanted to say. There was tension in his shoulders and Felix could see the occasional twitch of the muscle along his jaw as he tried and failed to make words come out of his mouth. 

Morbid fascination kept Felix sitting there with his mouth closed when he should have been getting up to leave or interrupting before Locus could get going. But it was like a train wreck. Time had slowed down to the point he couldn't move and although he could see the derailment coming, he couldn't will the train to stop or succeed in the fight against the heavy drag of time to get his mouth open and shout a futile warning. 

"It was last year," Locus tried again. "I—"

Finally, Felix got his mouth working. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, look." He held up his free hand. "I get that this whole _fun_ thing is probably still a confusing enigma for you and it's gonna take some trial and error to get it right. But Locus, _really._ Do I have to specifically say that I don't want to talk about the war?" His voice dropped into a soft hiss. "I thought that was understood." 

Locus shook his head. "This has nothing to do with the war."

 "You just _said_ —" 

"It's about you," Locus continued, steamrolling right over his protest in the kind of blatantly uncaring way that ordinarily would have made Felix proud. "I needed to—" 

"Shut up," Felix snapped viciously, slamming the bottle onto the top of the table so hard that it nearly cracked. "Jesus fucking Christ." He rubbed at his mouth with his free hand, glaring murder across the table. From the corner of his eye, he saw a few heads turn their way, but he ignored them. "I don't want to hear it. All right? _You_ wanted to come here and _talk_ or whatever, fine. I came. But I'm not going to sit here and listen to this. So either change the fucking subject or I'm done." 

Something pained and frustrated crossed Locus' face. "I just want to—"

Under no circumstances was Felix going to let him get traction with that. "I don't care." He made a short, slashing gesture motion with his hand. "Do you get that yet?" Very slowly and deliberately, he said, enunciating each word like it was its own sentence, "I. Don't. Care. It doesn't have anything to do with me." 

"Yes it does," Locus insisted stubbornly.

"No. It's about _you._ " He gestured expansively toward the bar. "This is all about you." But it was more than just the bar. It was the mission. It was the bizarre attempts to make peace with him so that Felix would sign off on his own death and give Locus his blessing to run off to a happily ever after with Wash. And he was already so fucking tired of it. "So I'm going to leave you to it and go enjoy my second drink with people who actually understand what _having fun_ means." 

Pushing himself out of the booth, Felix stood up, grabbed his glass of bourbon, and turned to go. Well-honed reflexes and a quick reaction time prevented him from colliding with the waiter and the two large plates loaded down with huge cheeseburgers and enormous piles of fries he was carrying. For a few awkward seconds, no one moved: Locus in his chair, Felix penned in by obstacles on all sides, and the young man who was just trying to do his job. 

The waiter had to have heard the argument. Felix hadn't been yelling, but he hadn't been whispering either. And their expressions certainly weren't that of two old friends having a rousing good time. Locus looked faintly constipated and Felix could feel how pinched and tight his own face was. It didn't matter. Felix wasn't ashamed of being overheard. But the waiter dithering uncertainly in the way of his exit wasn't appreciated. 

"Uh," the guy began, looking between them for a moment before settling for darting glances at Felix. "Did you want me to bring this—" 

He didn't need to hear the rest of the question. Felix knew what he was going to say. Belligerent obstinance made him shake his head and abruptly sit back down.  "It's fine. Thanks." 

In strained silence, the waiter distributed the food, nervously asked if they needed anything else, and then departed in a hurry when Locus shook his head and waved him away. Once he was gone, neither of them moved. Felix glared mistrustfully across the table at him, so pissed off that it was easy to ignore the tantalizing smell wafting up off the plate, and Locus stared back at him, looking less annoyed than Felix would have assumed and more... something. His mind conveniently sidestepped categorizing it, allowing him to remain sitting there in willful ignorance of what was going on. 

It was Locus that broke the stalemate. "What constitutes fun at a place like this?" 

Typically when Felix was being a stubborn asshole, he received a berating diatribe for it. That was what he was waiting for now, but that wasn't what he got. It was quiet and neutral, not _quite_ curious but not loaded with distaste either. Locus was trying. It was so obvious that he couldn't ignore or avoid it away, which just made it worse. He didn't want him to try. He didn't want him to be anything other than the backstabbing, murderous betrayer he'd turned about to be. Otherwise, how in the hell was he going to keep hating him? 

He didn't answer him. Instead, he gave him a wary sideways glance.  A quick flick of his eyes that he knew Locus was capable of interpreting correctly. Disbelief. Mistrust. Wariness of a trap. 

"Show me." 

Felix laughed under his breath. "Yeah, sure." 

"I'm serious," Locus insisted gravely. 

_Tell me something I don't fucking know. You're_ always _serious._ "No shit." 

Like he could read his mind, Locus rolled his eyes. Then he lifted his eyebrows, inquiry and challenge all in one.

Three years ago, Felix would have _loved_ the idea. Now, he just felt old and exasperated. "Really?"

"Yes." 

_This is going to be a fucking disaster._ After assessing his expression for over a minute, Felix decided that Locus was serious—figuratively and literally—and meant what he was asking. Sighing in defeat, he shrugged as disinterestedly as he could. "Don't expect much." Their definitions of fun had always been drastically different. Not even Wash the Wonder Fuck could change that. "I'm not a miracle worker." 

Except despite all the odds stacked against them, it didn't turn out as badly as Felix thought it would. 

Needing liquid support, he downed his bourbon in a few huge gulps and suggested Locus do the same. Instead of arguing about it, he did. And after flagging down a passing waiter for refills, they set to eating with minimal conversation about the safest, most trivial topics they could come up with. As the smell suggested, the food _was_ good and Felix practically starving meant that it tasted even better. The meat was juicy, the bun was fresh, and the cheese was sharp enough to stand out on its own. By the time he'd finished it and started working on making an inroad in the massive mound of fries, he'd finished the second bourbon and was nursing his way through a second bottle of beer.

Locus kept up with him, matching him drink for drink, and when twenty minutes passed without Felix snapping at him, he swung the conversation around to cars and volunteered information about the newest models. Specifically, the models that Felix had always favored, back when they'd spent more time planetside and less gallivanting around the galaxy. It wasn't the most subtle tactic. Felix knew what he was doing. But the combination of good food and a few strong drinks made him less inclined to pick a fight. And it wasn’t _so_ bad, hearing about the future. It was his present now, whether he liked it or not; he was going to have to get used to it somehow. 

Things got a little easier after that. Maybe it was the alcohol, loosening Locus up and dulling Felix’s anger. Or maybe Locus had simply taken Felix’s warning to heart and abandoned stupid ideas like talking about the more volatile aspects of their past. The conversation remained light and inconsequential, but it flowed without mishap and Felix’s smiles, when they appeared, lost their sharp, nasty edge. It wasn’t like the good old days by any means, but given the way things were between them, it was good enough.

“So this is fun for you?” Locus asked, a few hours later. Ordinarily, a question like that would have had Felix bristling in irritation at the slight, but for once, it wasn’t judgmental or disparaging. Just curious, like he genuinely wanted to know and understand. 

“Eh.” Felix tipped his head sideways and lifted his shoulder up to meet it in a half-hearted shrug. 

“You’re not having fun?” 

“I’m not _not_ having fun,” Felix clarified. At Locus’ blank look, he continued. “It’s like, there are layers of fun you can have on a night out, right? There’s no music or dancing in a place like this, so that’s already limiting it.” 

That didn’t appear to clear it up for him. “We can leave.”

“And sit around your penthouse doing work?” Felix snorted. “Yeah, no.” 

Nothing could have confirmed his suspicion that Locus was trying to find some common ground to meet him on like the suggestion he offered then. “There are other places we could go. One of those clubs you enjoy?” 

Felix very nearly spit the beer he’d just taken into his mouth all over Locus in surprise. He managed to reverse the expulsion of his breath before it happened, saving Locus from an unexpected drenching but causing the beer to go the wrong way down his throat. Coughing, he hunched over, trying to breathe through the burn and wiping at his watering eyes. “Did you just say we should go to a club?” he asked when he could talk again. “ _You_?” 

Locus just shrugged at him, like it was a perfectly normal thing for him to do. “If that would be more fun, then—”

“No.” He had to cut him off. Hearing any more of that was too bizarre for him to handle. “This is fine.” 

“You said it wasn’t any fun." 

"No, I didn't. I said it wasn't _as fun_ as it could be." Even without music and dancing, a night at the bar could be more fun than this one was, but the current state of things was working against him and that couldn't be fixed by relocating elsewhere. "But that isn't..." 

There was something strange going on over Locus' shoulder. Felix broke off the futile venture of trying to explain the impossible to someone who seemed determined to never understand what fun was to focus on it. A large group of people had entered the building, which wasn't in itself unusual. But it was fanning out in a way that seemed a little too deliberate to be a big group of friends looking to have a few drinks before closing time. In pairs, men—the group was comprised only of men—were breaking off and winding through the crowd. The place wasn't a hole in the wall, but it wasn't huge either. To a trained eye, it looked like the men were taking strategic positions among the tables while the rest headed to the bar.

"What—" Locus was already tensing to glance over his shoulder. 

"Don't turn around," Felix murmured softly, interrupting the question. "Something's going down." 

They'd consumed quite a large amount of alcohol. Neither of them was _drunk_ , but Felix was pleasantly buzzed and well on his way to getting there. Theoretically, Locus probably was too. But like flipping a switch, he was suddenly all business.

"What is it?" he asked calmly, keeping his eyes on Felix like they were still having an innocent conversation.

"Fifteen men. Probably armed." He couldn't see any visible sign of weapons from where he was sitting and without being obvious that he was examining the newcomers, but instinct told him that they hadn't come for drinks. "Half took up positions in the crowd. The rest are heading for the bar." 

Locus was silent for a moment. "Robbery?"

"Maybe." It wasn't really any of his business and Felix didn't actually care what happened to the place or the people in it. But if things were going in the direction he thought they were, it was going to be entertainment. And he had an annoying suspicion that Locus wasn't going to let it go. He flicked a quick glance at him. "You want to stop it?"

Instead of replying with an immediate affirmative, Locus took a long, thoughtful sip of his beer. Felix glanced at him again, frowning slightly. It wasn’t the onset of morality that irritated him, but yet another instance where he failed to predict what Locus was going to do.

“You sure?”

Felix shrugged, doing a quick calculation of the odds. “I’d bet on it.” 

“Remember Aleria?”

“That old mining colony?” Felix arched an eyebrow. It was one of their first jobs after the war. Shitty planet, drier than any desert he’d ever seen. There’d been some trouble with the union and the economy had been rapidly destabilizing. They’d been hired by parties interested in _not_ losing all their money to deal with a high profile troublemaker. “Yeah. We—Really?” 

Locus tipped his head sideways in a temporizing gesture. “It was fun.” 

_Huh._ Felix stared at him for a few seconds, surprised, then sniffed softly in amusement. “Better than what I was going to suggest anyway.”

Behind the rim of the bottle Locus was bringing up to his mouth, Felix thought he glimpsed the flash of a tiny smile.

Not wanting to think about it too much or ascribe meaning to something that likely had none, Felix pushed up off the booth and made his way around the table to head to the bar. He staggered as he passed by Locus, knocking into him and forcing him to reach out to steady him if he didn’t want him sprawled in his lap. 

“Whoops. Tripped,” Felix said, laughing. “Sorry.”

Locus gave him a dry look, easily communicating to anyone that glanced their way that he was utterly unconvinced by the painfully fake apology. “If you’re incapable of handling it, I’ll get my own beer.” 

“Shh, no.” Back on his feet, Felix patted Locus’ shoulder, then kept walking. Over his shoulder, he called, “Said I was buying, didn’t I? I meant it.” 

He was nearly at his destination when he bumped into one of the men strategically positioned on the floor. “Oh!” Recoiling as soon as he made contact, Felix grimaced in apology. “Sorry, man. My bad.” 

The guy scowled at him, straightened his jacket, and turned his back on him. Ever so casually, Felix tucked the handgun he’d pilfered from the guy between his waistband and the small of his back. A flick of his fingers covered it with the back of his shirt as he continued on his way, unaccosted. 

_Is everybody in the future fucking retarded or what?_ Sure, it made life easier for him, but Felix was still appalled by how incompetent these people were. Especially here on Gilgamesh, where everyone was a thief, killer, or worse. A thug getting ready to shake down an establishment for whatever reason shouldn’t have let some random “drunk” patron make off with his piece. Felix would’ve broken the guy’s hand before it had gotten anywhere near to touching him, if their positions had been reversed, but this guy might as well have just handed it over with a smile. It was like distance from the war had made them all soft, more wary of aliens than the infinitely more dangerous monsters that lurked much closer to home.

Fetching up against the bar near where the leader of the group—gang?—was speaking with quiet menace to the bartender, Felix slumped over onto his elbows and rapped his knuckles against the wood. “Hey!” He waved two fingers toward the bartender. “Can I get a beer for my friend over there?” As the bartender and the thug looked over at him, the former a little wild-eyed and pained and the latter irritated, Felix flashed a cheeky grin. “He’s still too sober and I want to get laid tonight.”

By now, everybody in the joint was aware of him at least on some degree. He’d made enough of a spectacle on his way through the bar that people had to have taken notice, even if just from the corner of their eye, and he was talking loudly enough that Locus had an excuse to look over and mark the targets. The bit about getting laid hadn’t been part of the ruse in that dive in Aleria—he _had_ gotten laid though, quite a few times during that week—but he knew Locus got irritable whenever he broadcasted any bits of his personal life, real or imaginary, to other people. Shooting him an unrepentant wave and a wink now, Felix was gleefully rewarded with a scowl that wasn’t part of the show. 

“Josey’ll be with you in a minute,” the presumable leader of the group told him, dragging his attention away from goading Locus. He shot a dark look at the bartender. “We just need to finish up a few things here.”

“Hurry it up, huh?” Felix blithely ignored the pallor of Josey’s skin and the drop of sweat that was making its way down the side of his face. “Every beerless second is another second of sobriety gaining on me.”

For a moment, as the leader of the idiots stared at him, it seemed like he was going to impress him. But instead of calling him on the drunk act or throw his nonexistent authority around and try to run him off so he could get back to uninterrupted business, the guy turned away and ignored him. Felix could pinpoint the exact instant where the guy’s faulty instincts deemed him harmless, when the assessing stare glazed over just prior to the turn of his head. Felix didn’t feel pity for his victims and he never felt bad when he killed people, but oh, was he looking forward to killing this brainless motherfucker.

“All right,” Locus said apologetically as he came up behind him and laid a hand against the small of his back. Because he was waiting for it, Felix felt the there and gone whisper of air against his skin as the purloined gun was withdrawn. “Let’s go sit back down and stop bothering these people.”

Felix tipped his head backward, flashing Locus—and the gawkers watching them—a besotted smile. “Oh, darling. Where’s the fun in that?" 

Locus’ answer came by way of a gunshot fired near the side of his head, the sharp crack of the suppressed bullet thankfully not deafening at such a close range. Felix was already moving, pushing off the bar stool and darting toward the moron’s falling body to relieve him of his handgun. Moron’s goon were returning fire by then. Felix let his forward momentum take him to the floor in a roll that carried him behind a hastily abandoned table. Then he was up and shooting back, plucking three of them out of the shouting crowd. Over the din, he could hear the calm, measured beat of Locus unloading what was in the gun's clip. Four bullets, Felix counted, because of course the stupid fucker who'd been carrying it hadn't bothered to reload before heading out.

The other seven had scattered in the confusion, seeking cover behind overturned tables and the partial walls that separated the bar from the slightly more formal dining area. Felix laughed, almost losing himself to the hilarity of the moment as he dodged around a really ugly potted plant and shot one of the guys in the head. _Too fucking easy_.

"Down!" Locus barked from behind him.

Without missing a beat, Felix dove to the floor and from somewhere above him glass shattered. He heard another crack, made all the louder by the lack of continued breaking glass. _Nine down. Six to go._  

He caught a glimpse of Locus trading blows with one of the thugs as he got back to his feet. It must have been panic that led the dipshit to make that decision. Locus had enough muscle to discourage anyone with sense not to get up close and personal unless they had no other choice. Felix considered for a fraction of a second, recognizing immediately that he had it under control and would win in the next few seconds. Then he lifted his pistol and put a bullet in the guy's head, right between his eyes as he pivoted around to take another swing. 

"Four to six!" Felix called out as Locus swung around, his former opponent dropping lifelessly to the floor. "Better shape up. I'm gaining on you." 

Locus didn't respond, but one of his eyebrows twitched slightly.

It turned into a competition after that. There were only five left and Locus was already two ahead, which forced Felix to duck and weave around the room faster to try to get the shot first. The interior of the establishment wasn't so full of furniture and decorations that there were an overabundance of places to hide and most of the innocent—at least in this regard; no one on Gilgamesh was innocent—patrons had fled. At the beginning, the thugs had tried to blend into the crowd and leave with it, but Locus had picked those off first. Now the rest were hiding wherever they could, futilely trying to win a battle they had no hope in hell of actually doing. 

A bullet whizzed by Felix's ear as he was lining up a shot on an idiot cowering behind one of the potted plants. Twisting around, he fired back along the same trajectory as he lobbed a knife toward his original target. The sound of another shot being fired accompanied it. As Felix turned back to the plant, the first shooter now a bloody corpse, he saw the body fall down to sprawl on the floor. His knife protruded from the guy's throat and blood leaked from a hole in his temple. 

"That was mine!" Felix shouted, gesturing toward the body as he sought out Locus. 

"Bullet's faster than a knife," Locus responded, shrugging with casual negligence despite the three hostiles lurking in the vicinity. 

"I threw before you fired." Felix edged around a couple tables to join him near the bar. "That makes it my kill." 

"He was dead before your knife struck him."

"You stole—!" His teeth clacked shut on his argument as Locus abruptly grabbed his arm and jerked him to the side. A bullet splintered a hole in the side of the bar where Felix had been standing an instant later.

Without hesitation, he used the momentum to add strength to the elbow he jammed into Locus' side, jostling him and disrupting his aim. The shot he'd been in the process of lining up in retaliation went just a hair wide of the mark, but the thug didn't have a moment's reprieve to appreciate the near miss. Felix had already fired off a round in his direction and that took him right through the eye. 

" _Definitely_ mine," Felix announced smugly. 

Locus slanted a wry look his way. "That was cheating." 

_Duh_. Smirking at him, Felix shrugged. "Seven to six." 

" _My_ seven to _your_ six," Locus clarified immediately, voice still mild. Almost amused, even. 

"Nope." 

Killing the last two thugs didn't put the matter unequivocally to rest. Locus killed the next one after the moron poked his head out from behind an overturned table and Felix got the last one trying to sneak out a side exit, leaving the score unhelpfully at eight to seven. 

" _My_ eight," Felix insisted as he walked back out into the main area to survey the damage, absently wiping the bloody blade of one of his knives clean on a napkin. 

"You wish," Locus contested without bite. He emptied the clip from the gun he was using and tossed it down onto one of the bodies.

"I _know_. That one kill was—" Hearing a noise behind the bar, Felix shut his mouth. Shooting Locus a look, he sauntered over and peered over the top of it. The bartender was slowly getting to his feet, looking pale and spooked. "All right there, man?"

Visibly startling, the bartender whipped around to face him, already lifting his hands in surrender. Felix lifted his eyebrows and held up both of his hands, though once he caught sight of the knife still held in the one, he dropped it and hastily put the blade away. The apologetic smile he gave the guy was a little too smirky to be genuinely sorry, but he made the half-hearted attempt. 

"Were you injured?" Locus asked, stepping up to the bar and distracting the guy's attention away from Felix.

Josey, if that was his real name, shot Locus a skittish look. "Uh, no. No, I'm fine. Are you—" 

"Concerned patrons," Locus supplied, not letting him finish the question. "Sorry about the mess." 

Felix watched the exchange with more interest than he wanted to admit to having. It had always been his job to talk to the randoms they encountered. Locus didn't enjoy it and often had no desire to interact with anyone outside of what necessity demanded. Yet here he was, having a conversation with a stranger like it was something he did on a regular basis. He wasn't as loquacious as Felix and he didn't get sidetracked from the topic at hand, but after inquiring about the bartender's well-being and apologizing for shooting up the place, he discussed repayment and cleanup with the guy. 

This evidently wasn't the first time Josey had been in trouble with the gang. They'd wanted his endorsement to use the bar as a public front to conduct business. Josey wanted to stay neutral and not pick a side with the various factions, rackets, and other _entrepreneurs_ of the planet. He told his story to Locus quickly, surprisingly straightforward, and though Felix watched him for tells and overanalyzed what he said, he couldn't find a lie in it. No one was _good_ on Gilgamesh, but apparently they'd walked into one of the few places that weren't run by someone explicitly _bad_.

_Leave it to Locus to find the one do-gooder on a planet full of evil bastards_ , Felix thought, rolling his eyes as Locus passed along the name and contact information of someone in the city who could help good old Josey clean up the place and keep it free of further trouble. 

Boredom finally got the better of him. "I can set a table on fire if the two of you want to roast some marshmallows and sing kumbaya together." 

"That won't be necessary," Locus responded immediately, giving him a look that was equal parts exasperated and quelling. 

In return, Felix lifted his eyebrows. There was a wealth of conversation in that simple gesture. _I'm bored. Being bored isn't fun. I'm still pretty buzzed and if fun doesn't start happening in a hurry, I'm going to make it happen. You aren't going to like it, so stop fucking around with this loser and pay attention to me._  

Josey probably couldn't understand the nuances of Felix's facial expressions the way Locus could, but he didn't appear to need that skill. Without a word, he reached down out of sight, came up seconds later with two frosty cold bottles of beer, popped them open, and slid them across the bar. "Here. On the house. Same as your tab. It's the least I can do for the help the two of you gave me." 

Killing people was a thirsty business. They finished the beers before they made it out of the bar, but Josey hooked them up with two more for the road. It wasn’t enough to make the night rate as the most fun Felix had ever had—that honor was reserved for a little job about three and a half years ago on Gannick 22—but it hadn’t been as terrible as he’d thought it was going to be when Locus had suggested it. 

They drank their beers in companionable silence on the majority of the walk back and when Felix demonstrated a particularly dexterous feat of pocketpicking, Locus only shook his head in exasperation. _Feigned_ exasperation, because Felix saw that there and gone smile that flitted across Locus’ mouth like a skittish moa. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t goad him into taking a turn, but just before they reached their destination, Locus humored him by pointing out a target that looked marginally alert and might therefore present a minor challenge. 

“Admit it,” Felix said smugly, as he slouched against the back wall of the elevator and waved the stolen wallet at Locus. “I’m good.” 

Pausing in the middle of reaching out to press the button for the top floor, Locus glanced back at him and lifted his eyebrows slightly. “You’re drunk.” 

It was maybe the worst chastisement ever. Felix just smirked at him. “And still undetectable.” 

Evidently realizing that he couldn’t present a legitimate argument against that point, Locus hummed noncommittally and hit the button. “But you had fun.” 

He said it so matter-of-factly that it took Felix a few seconds to realize that he was asking a question. It took a couple more before he understood that Locus was genuinely trying to find out if he’d had a good time. Innate contrariness urged him to let him hang by pretending to think about it for too long, but Felix was feeling good enough that he decided not to be a pain in the ass for once. 

“Sure.” He rocked his head side to side: agreement without a rousing ring of approval. 

Settling against the wall beside him, Locus turned to regard him. “But?” 

Tipping his head back, Felix threw him a grinned sharpened by alcohol, the violence of the evening still burning through his blood, and the memory of a night a hell of a lot wilder than this little dust-up had been. “Aleria’s still got it beat.” 

Locus gave him a dark, inscrutable look that Felix returned with a challenging smirk, daring him to contradict it. Aleria had been one for the record books; nothing, not death or Freelancers or the future could erase that. And he was willing to bet the fortune he was earning with this job that nothing Locus had done with Wash since his death had come remotely close. 

For a second, maybe two, Locus stared at him. Then he was on him, pinning him against the wall with one hand and taking hold of the back of his neck with the other. Felix opened his mouth—to protest, to curse him out, to snarl something vicious and threatening—but whatever he’d intended to say was silenced by Locus’ lips. It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claiming; a brutal, possessive demand. His teeth caught at Felix’s lower lip, stinging, before his tongue swept into his mouth like he owned it. 

Felix’s fingers dug into Locus’ arms, the leather of the jacket shielding his skin from the damage that might have been caused by his fingernails, not entirely clear whether he was trying to shove him away or keep him there. There was an indistinct noise rumbling between them, so low that it took him far too long to realize that he was making it. Maybe it was meant as a warning to back the fuck off, but there was an undertone of wanting in it that stole any bite it might have had. Locus had to hear it, but neither it nor Felix’s lack of reciprocation gave him pause. He kept kissing him like he meant to drag every last particle of air from his lungs.

With the way Felix’s head was starting to swim, he was succeeding whether that was his intention or not. What he needed to do, he knew, was get Locus off of him. There was no way this was going to end any better now than it would have if it had happened back in that hotel room. But trying to convince his body to cooperate and push him away or knee him in the groin was a losing battle. Felix blamed it on the alcohol. It was easier to do that than to admit to himself that even getting Wash's sloppy seconds wasn't enough to make him stop wanting him so fucking badly. 

And since the alcohol was already taking the blame for this horrible lapse in judgment, Felix was happy to blame everything else he did on it too. 

Locus finally broke the kiss, leaning back to take a breath and probably say something stupid, infuriating, or infuriatingly stupid. Felix grabbed him by the sides of the face and jerked him back down. This time, he not only participated in the kiss, he took it over. It was his tongue invading Locus' mouth and his fingers yanking the tie out of Locus' hair so he could get his fingers in it and use it to hold him where he wanted him. Something passed between them, some strange, wounded sound that he knew he didn't make, and Locus' grip on him turned bruising. 

It wasn’t some romantic, years-late reunion of a pair of lovers overcoming insurmountable, tragic odds to finally be together. There was nothing loving and gentle about it. Instead, it was as violent and combative as the life they’d been living. 

Locus kissed him like he was fighting for his life. It was harsh and biting, all teeth and pressure and the dominating sweep of his tongue as he reclaimed Felix’s mouth. Felix was almost positive that Locus had bitten him hard enough to draw blood at some point. There was a faint tang of copper in his mouth and a sting in his lip that he didn’t think was from some surfacing memory of the halcyon days of yore. He didn’t mind at all. He bit him back, intentionally drawing blood, and scored deep marks across the back of his neck with his fingernails.   

Quickly, it became almost impossible to get a proper breath. Felix’s lungs were burning, fed only by the tiniest sips of air whenever they broke apart for a second or two, and his lips already felt swollen and bruised. Locus was likely no better off—this close, Felix couldn’t get a proper look at him and he didn’t care to stop for one—but he didn’t seem to mind it any more than Felix did. It certainly didn’t slow him down or make him ease up and gentle the kissing. 

A break came when Locus’ hands dropped to his hips and lifted him clear off the ground. Felix jerked his head back mid-kiss, startled, and opened his eyes to see that the elevator doors had opened. They’d arrived at the top floor and he hadn’t even realized it, but Locus evidently had, because _of course_ he did. He could be dick deep in someone’s ass, thrusting his way to rapidly approaching orgasm, and still have the wherewithal to reach down, pick up a pistol, and casually shoot three hired guns who’d broken in to kill him without losing the rhythm or his erection. Felix knew this from firsthand, intimate experience and to this day would swear that it was the violence that had caused Locus to come as hard as he had that night.

Or maybe it was just having a gun in his hand at the time. Locus had always really liked guns.

It didn’t take more than a handful of steps for Felix to get with the program and figure out what Locus was intending. Draping his arms around his shoulders for better stability, he wrapped his legs around his waist and let Locus carry him out of the elevator and across the hall to the penthouse door. Halfway there, apparently taking issue with his distraction, Locus bit him on the throat, just under his jaw. Hissing, he retaliated by pulling hard on Locus’ hair and snapping at his lower lip. Distraction, and the possibility of thinking about what was happening, averted. 

Somehow, they got the door open. It was a complicated process that involved pinning Felix against the wall so that Locus could let him go to fish for his keycard, but digging around in the pockets of too tight jeans proved difficult when he seemed more interested in decorating Felix’s neck with what felt like artistically applied bruises. Felix eventually slapped his hand out of the way, slid the card out of his back pocket—deft fingers and an unwillingness to let an opportunity to grab Locus’ ass pass him by never let him down—and unlocked the door himself. 

Locus didn’t set him down and Felix didn’t unwrap his legs from his waist. He was hard as fuck and enjoying the faint friction he was getting from having his cock trapped against Locus’ stomach almost as much as he enjoyed it when Locus abandoned his throat and went back to sucking on his tongue. Where they were going and how they were getting there wasn’t his problem. Getting Locus out of the jacket without putting distance between them _was_ , however, and with his higher thought processes temporarily shut down in favor of diverting his blood to his dick, it was a struggle. 

He got his hands underneath the collar and bushed it off of Locus’ shoulders, but it got stuck on his elbows, bent as they were to keep his hands gripping Felix’s hips. A snarl of frustration escaped him, muffled against Locus’ lips as his tongue slid smoothly into Felix’s mouth. It licked across his own, momentarily mollifying him. But then he felt as much as heard the low rumble of Locus’ laughter and nipped him in reproach. 

It didn’t stop him from laughing at him. Nothing ever did. But it did prompt Locus to let him go long enough to shrug out of the offending garment. _And toss it down on the floor_. If Felix wasn’t in the middle of running his hands over Locus’ shoulders, reacquainting himself with the muscles he could feel so much more easily under the thinner fabric of the t-shirt than he could with thick leather in the way, he would have boggled at the impossibility of it. Neat, fussy Locus, tossing expensive clothes onto the floor instead of taking a break to hang it up where it belonged. 

What had the future come to? 

He was in the middle of rucking up the shirt across Locus’ back when his ass hit something hard and uncomfortable. Automatically, he dropped his legs so that he could catch his balance. But Locus didn’t give him time to do that. As soon as his feet hit the floor, Felix was abruptly spun around and pushed forward. He caught himself before a second impact, bracing his hands across the cool granite of the countertop. The kitchen, he realized, now that he wasn’t preoccupied with kissing Locus. They hadn’t made it any further than that. 

Sucking in a much needed breath, Felix started to straighten, only for Locus to grab him by the back of the neck and shove him none too gently down until he was sprawled across the top of the counter, his cheek pressing a little too hard against it. “What—”

“Say it,” Locus demanded, cutting him off. His voice was rough, distorted from its usual deep rumble by lust, and the pressure of his fingers tightened. 

Clarification wasn't necessary. Between the tone of his voice and the hardness of his cock where it was pressed up against his ass, Felix knew what he wanted. And perversely, he didn't want to give it to him. He didn't deserve it. Not after years of being a fucking asshole. Not after however long he'd spent fucking an asshole. Forgiveness wasn't coded into Felix's genetic makeup. He remembered every slight and insult, every minor stab in the back and every major betrayal. Practically everyone who ever crossed him died. Only Locus had ever gotten away with anything. However, there were some trespasses even he wasn’t permitted and Felix wasn’t prepared to let this one go unpunished.

 But then, Locus didn’t always play fair. And deciding to become the hero of the galaxy apparently hadn’t changed that. 

When Felix didn’t respond, opting instead to glare at the counter in stubborn refusal, Locus leaned in until his chest was pressed against his back, blanketing him in his weight. The movement brought his mouth right up against Felix’s ear and slid his knee in between his legs, widening his stance. It was a calculated maneuver and knowing that, knowing Locus wanted to provoke a specific reaction, should have been all the fuel he needed to resist it. But it wasn’t. It was too reminiscent of the way they’d been in the past and he was already too aroused to put too much effort into fighting it. 

And Locus’ gravelly murmur at his ear, his warm breath and soft lips lightly brushing his skin, sure as hell didn’t bolster his resolve to be wholly uncooperative. “Say it, Isaac.” 

Futile as it was, he tried to twist his neck out of Locus’ hand, but all he got for his trouble was a warning squeeze that was the wrong side of painful.    

“Sam.” It slipped out of his mouth involuntarily, the sound of that single word too hoarse to fool either of them into believing it had anything to do with the way Locus was holding him down. “Goddamn it, just—” 

“Again,” Locus murmured softly, not loosening his grip or straightening up even a centimeter.

He’d lost this fight and he knew it. Locus knew it too. The contrary part of him wanted to resist just for the sake of forcing Locus to pry it out of him, but even at his most disagreeable and intractable, he knew it was pointless. He’d already cracked. It was better to get it over with so that he could get what he wanted than drag it out for no reason. Damn Locus—and also his dick for how impatient it was making him—anyway. 

“ _Sam_.” Felix gave in with poor, irritable grace, hissing the name out through clenched teeth. 

The pressure around his neck disappeared, replaced by the light, stroking sensation of Locus’ fingertips brushing over the marks he’d probably made. It was the first even remotely gentle touch they’d exchanged since the elevator. He didn’t know he felt about it and the way his stomach lurched and twisted itself into a knot over it didn’t clear the matter up for him. _Don’t think about it._  

Hoping to distract Locus away from whatever the fuck he was thinking, if he was thinking, Felix shifted restlessly under him. “Can we—”

But once again, he didn’t get to finish. “Tell me.”  

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” He exhaled so hard that he jostled Locus. Not hard enough to get him to move, but he felt him shift in response, regaining his balance. “You don’t need to—” 

“ _Tell me_ ,” Locus snapped impatiently, punctuating the demand by digging his fingers painfully into his hip.

“Christ,” Felix swore softly, breathless for all the wrong reasons. _Fine, you fucking asshole._ Grudgingly, he added out loud, “Fuck me.” 

It shouldn’t have needed to be said. At this point, they both knew where this was going. They’d known it in the elevator when Felix hadn’t pushed him away. Locus wanting to hear it said was just some kind of inexplicably stupid ego trip and after what he’d done, Felix didn’t think he deserved to be humored.

Locus clearly thought otherwise. The grunt he gave in response was so unimpressed that Felix didn’t need to see his face to know what expression was currently lurking on it. But that wasn’t anything new. Nearly every look, expression, and reaction he had weaseled out of Locus lately, prior to his jaunt to the future, had been unimpressed. Like he was nothing more than an irritant. Like it took every ounce of Locus’ patience to barely tolerate him. Felix hated it. Hated it so much that he went out of his way to be as obnoxious as possible, wanting to give him a reason. 

He couldn’t bear that Locus’ reason was simply that he didn’t like him and maybe never had. 

Unimpressed disapproval came with the loss of his weight as Locus abruptly straightened up and stepped back, still close yet not close enough for any part of his body to touch Felix’s. It wouldn’t be the first time that Locus bailed on sex before either of them got off, but this time, it would probably be the last. The circumstances that led them to this point weren’t going to happen again. Out of spite, Felix almost let it end. If Locus was so pent up, he could call his fucking boyfriend to come take care of it. His injured pride urged him to stay silent. His anger wanted retribution and didn’t want to give Locus any more than he’d already gotten. But his dick—he wouldn’t allow himself to think anything else might be involved—had more pressing concerns.  

“Goddamn it, Sam,” he snarled, hating himself and Locus for this and wanting it just the same. “ _Fuck me._ ”

A low, rumbling growl echoed between them that Felix was about ninety-seven percent certain came from Locus. It was impatient and possessive and it shot straight to his cock. Another jolt of arousal spiked through him when Locus moved in and pressed the evidence of his undiminished interest hard against his ass. He pushed back immediately, his own sense of possessiveness making him smile when he heard Locus’ sharp intake of breath. And he kept smiling as Locus caught him by the wrists and squeezed so hard that he was sure he’d see marks of it the next day. The message was crystal clear without him having to say a word. _Keep them there._

Instead of verbally agreeing, Felix impatiently bucked his hips backward into Locus’. It was tempting to sneer something spiteful over his shoulder for dragging this out. Something like _, You forget how to fuck someone now that you’re Wash’s bitch?_ But if there was a surefire way to kill the mood, it was to mention that fucking asshole. Locus would probably get angry and defensive and Felix absolutely did not, under any circumstances, want to think about Wash during sex. 

“Have a little patience,” Locus told him, letting go of his wrists to hold his hips still. 

“Do you need me to walk you through it?” Felix returned sarcastically. 

“No.” 

The snappy retort was accompanied by Locus brusquely opening his jeans and yanking them and his underwear down to his knees in one quick motion. The air was cold against his bare skin. He could feel it prickling over his ass and an answering tingle along his forearms as the hair there rose. Locus’ hands didn’t return to him; in the silence, he could hear the rustle of fabric and the slide of a zipper as he opened his own pants. A moment later, he shoved the back of Felix’s t-shirt up out of the way. 

Then he paused. 

It had been a _long_ time since Felix had been fucked. The last person to do it had been Locus, seemingly a lifetime ago. A little spit and a half-hearted attempt at preparing him would have been enough back before everything had gone to shit, but it wasn’t going to work now. Felix didn’t mind a little discomfort on a good day and on a bad one, he kind of enjoyed it. This wasn’t a good day. Nothing was comfortable for him, least of all his relationship with Locus, and the last thing he wanted was for this to be even halfway gentle. That would have made him sick. But he didn’t want to get _hurt_ , either. 

Felix opened his mouth to tell him to take two fucking seconds to get something from the bathroom, but Locus was already moving away. He didn’t go far, just a few meters down the counter, and when Felix pushed himself up onto his palms from his sprawl and turned his head to try to see what the fuck he was doing, he saw him grabbing a bottle from near the refrigerator. 

“What is that?” 

Locus didn’t answer him. He stepped behind him, disappearing from any view that didn’t require Felix to crane his neck in weird angles to see him, and after a few seconds, the unmistakable aroma of coconut wafted through the air to his nose. Immediately, it brought to mind images of hot, sandy beaches, the crashing rush of waves breaking on the shore, the raucous call of seabirds and their alien counterparts, and palm trees. It smelled unmistakably like vacation. 

“Is that _sunscreen_?” He wasn’t going to put the kibosh on sex if it was, that stuff was slippery as hell and he didn’t know enough about its chemical composition to care whether it was okay to stand in for actual lube, but it would certainly be the most unconventional thing they’d used.

“Shut up,” Locus told him, though the familiar demand lacked the requisite anger and annoyance to be a real order, and set the bottle down close enough that he could see the label out of the corner of his eye.

He started to look, but Locus chose that moment to shove a slick finger into him so abruptly that the sudden burst of sensation—too much too fast to be wholly pleasant—made him forget all about it. A thin whine caught in the back of his throat, choked off because he wasn’t getting the proper amount of air with his whole body seizing up like it was, but his dick didn’t flag. The blood was pounding so hard in it that it felt a little like it was throbbing in time with his racing heart. It shut him up, too. Felix couldn’t have strung three coherent words together if he tried. 

That must have pleased Locus, because he didn’t wait for him to get used to it. Without pause, he started fucking into him with that finger. Each thrust in was short and forceful, impatiently leashed the way Locus only ever got when he was starting to lose control and trying to rein himself in. Too soon, maybe not soon enough for this, one finger became two. Felix relaxed into it, gave himself over to the bright edge of pleasure-pain and let it curl his fingers against the counter, his hands still where Locus had demanded them stay. The more he relaxed the better it felt and he was just starting to push back into it in demand for more when Locus pulled out.

The cessation of sensation was too much to tolerate. 

“You son of a bitch!” Felix spat the words into the uncaring granite. “Don’t you dare—”

“Quiet,” Locus growled.

Felix could feel him shifting around, heard the wet sound of skin against skin. _Slicking himself up_ , he realized and exhaled a long breath to release the tension in his body. Locus took hold of his hip to hold him steady. _Fuck. Finally_. 

He was expecting the initial penetration to hurt more than it did, but Locus didn’t jam his dick into his ass the way he had his fingers. He didn’t exactly go painstakingly slowly either, thank fuck for that; just kept the pressure steady until he was inside him up to the hilt, his chest almost flush against Felix’s back, and breathing so hotly into the back of his neck that Felix could feel his skin starting to sweat. Locus wasn’t still for very long, only for the span of a handful of breaths, and when he began to move, it was in earnest. 

Felix braced his hands against the counter, let his head fall forward to hang between his shoulders, and closed his eyes. It was easier to get lost in the feeling of it without the visual distraction. Locus’ cock filled him, neither too large nor too small, and the pace he set was rapid and rhythmic. Neither spoke. Locus had never been very vocal during sex—a sharp breath, a quiet grunt, or a soft gasp was mostly all Felix had ever been able to wring from him—and time hadn’t changed that. Felix, on the other hand, was usually extremely vocal. This time, however, he said nothing, too focused on the fucking and too determined not to think about anything to offer commentary. 

It was a reprieve that didn’t last very long. Locus was relentless, almost frantic, and Felix hadn’t gotten laid properly in months. Too soon, he felt Locus’ callused hand close around his cock. All it took were a few rough pumps and he was coming, the pleasure sharp and sudden and on the verge of too much. He made no sound beyond a swift inhale as his hips jerked erratically, pushing into Locus’ fist. And Locus worked him through it, dragging him through the orgasm until he was spent and the continued stroking got uncomfortable. A low groan of protest and a twitch got Locus to let go, and as Felix sagged bonelessly against the counter, Locus picked up the pace of his thrusts. 

Less than a dozen and he came too, hard enough that he bit the back of Felix’s neck to muffle his moan. But Felix could feel it, there against his neck and where Locus’ chest was pressed against his back. It made him smile in smug satisfaction, the viciousness dulled by the post-orgasmic haze blanketing his mind.  

Regrettably, it lifted while they were still standing there, Felix taking most of their combined weight to keep them both upright and Locus recovering his breath in a sprawl against his back. As the artificial contentment evaporated, raw awkwardness rushed in to fill its place. Felix _itched_ with restlessness and the suffocating closeness of Locus’ body. He needed distance now, before his brain started generating thoughts he didn’t want to think. Which meant that Locus needed to get the fuck off of him. _Now._  

Shifting, Felix started to straighten. The movement jostled Locus into focus, probably reminded him where he was and who he’d just fucked, and he stood up, taking a step backward that pulled him out of Felix so fast that Felix couldn’t suppress the hiss of discomfort. 

“I’m sorry,” Locus said softly, his voice strangely rough and all wrong. Felix felt the tips of his fingers touch his hips in an oddly hesitant gesture of apology. 

It was everything he didn’t want to hear. Not that he wanted to hear anything at all right now. He just wanted peace and quiet, or barring that, an absence of Locus so he could pretend that none of this had happened. An apology for fucking him or cheating on Wash or whatever the fuck it was supposed to be was intolerable. His shoulders hunched in instinctive defensiveness as he glared furiously at the swirl of grey and white stone under his hands. 

“Spare me the soap opera drama,” he replied, proud of how cold and flat his voice sounded. It was unaffected. Uncaring. Like nothing Locus could do would ever reach him.

“For hurting you,” Locus returned. His hand fell away from Felix’s hip and in the absence of the contact, Felix could hear the rustle of fabric as he got himself back in order. 

He was in the middle of straightening up and reaching for his own pants, ignoring the twinge of discomfort in his lower back, when the clarification on the apology stalled him out. For _hurting_ him? _What the fuck does that even mean?_ He wondered, vacillating between feeling horribly off-balance and offended. That Locus believed he had the power to wound Felix emotionally—an accurate belief, however much Felix denied to himself that he did—was ludicrously insulting. But it was bizarre, too, because Locus didn’t apologize for the shit he did. Not anymore. 

“What?” Felix asked neutrally. 

“I was too rough.” _Oh_. He was talking about the sex. Felix breathed out in annoyance, not quite loud enough to qualify as a huff. “I’m sorry for that.” 

“It’s fine.” He didn’t turn around, but he did hike up his pants now that the paralysis had lifted and he was back on firmer ground. 

Locus sighed. “Isaac...” 

_No. No, no, no, no._ That was unacceptable. They weren’t Sam and Isaac now. They were Felix and Locus. One misguided fuck to burn off the rampant hostility so they didn’t kill each other did not erase years of estrangement. 

Felix twisted around, scowling. “It’s fine, _Sam_.” He deliberately loaded the name with sarcasm. “Christ. I’m not made of glass.”

The ground got even firmer, if Locus was back to insulting his physical constitution. Felix was anything but weak. And if Locus doubted that because he’d seen him die, he would find a way to remind him in exacting, and probably painful, detail. 

“I know.” Locus was searching his face in a way that Felix really didn’t appreciate. “Still—” 

He’d told him that he didn’t want to hear any bullshit and he was still standing there. Talking. Apparently trying to have some kind of idiotic heart-to-heart. Felix wrinkled his nose. “Is this where you give me the regret speech? Because you can skip it and go the fuck away. Take a shower.” He pointed toward the door to Locus’ bedroom for helpful emphasis, willing to give Locus a few visual clues if that would get him out of the kitchen faster. 

It didn’t work. He kept standing there, effectively blocking Felix’s forward movement. The only way around him was to make an awkward shuffle sideways and that seemed too much like retreat to contemplate actually doing. 

“I don’t regret it,” he said, a note of exaggerated patience creeping into his voice. “Do you want me to go?”

_Maybe_ , Felix thought irritably, _I should have said it in Spanish. What’s the phrase?_ He wracked his brain, trying to remember. Save for cursing and other assorted vulgarity, Spanish had never come easily to him. Possibly because he’d never put much effort into really learning it. _Sal something. Aquí? Sal de aquí?_  

He gave Locus a flat, unimpressed glare as he tried to work out the proper accent and whether or not that guess was correct. The last thing he needed to do was say something that made it sound like he wanted him there in his space. He most emphatically did not. “Do you want to stay here bothering me?” he asked pointedly, like he was talking to a dimwitted child.

“Yes.” Locus’ answer was so immediate that Felix blinked in surprise.

“Uh...” he said dumbly. Then, expecting some kind of trap, he asked warily, “Why?”

 Locus sighed. “Because if I leave, you will too.”

That was a little too close to Felix’s intention to escape any further awkwardness than he appreciated. “No,” he started, frowning. “That’s not—” 

“Yes it is.” There wasn’t any accusation in Locus’ tone or on his face. He was saying it matter-of-factly, like reading off the points of a mission briefing. “If you don’t leave the building, you’ll hole up in your room and refuse to talk to me.” 

In all honesty, Felix hadn’t been thinking about leaving the building. But he _had_ been thinking about getting a shower of his own and then locking the door and not coming out until at least midday tomorrow. Now that he’d been called on it, he had two options: denial or to fess up. The former was more his style, but the latter would probably end up shutting the conversation down faster than the protracted argument the instinctive option would start. 

Crossing his arms over his chest, Felix lifted his eyebrows. “That’s because I don’t want to talk to you.” 

“We need to talk.” 

_Hell the fuck no._ “No, we really, _really_ don’t.” 

Stubbornness was setting into Locus’ expression like concrete. " _Yes_ , we do. We just—"

"Oh my _god_ , you're like a fucking woman." Felix rubbed his hands down his face. "Jesus Christ. We didn't get drunk and wake up married. We fucked. And now you're completely ruining the afterglow here, so thanks for that."

Locus took one of those deep, shoulder shaking breaths that meant he was seconds away from losing his temper. "Please stop being difficult." 

"I'm not the one who—" 

" _Isaac_ ," Locus interrupted sharply. Felix braced for a tirade, but all he got was a quiet, disturbingly earnest, "Please." 

It wasn't something Felix heard from Locus often. When he wasn't pissed off, requests often came as no nonsense orders. And when he was, Locus employed a variety of interesting methods of demanding compliance: snapping, yelling, growling, and occasionally grabbing and shaking him. But a sincere please? That was new.

New enough that Felix heaved a sigh and gave in. " _Fine_." At least if he suffered through this godawful _talk_ sooner rather than later they could get it over with and he could get on with pretending the entire night hadn't happened. He glanced away from Locus for a moment, trying to get his thoughts in order, and found himself staring at the bottle from earlier. _Not sunscreen after all,_ he thought inanely, as he read _coconut oil_ on the label. "Just give me like half an hour to take a shower. Maybe you don't want one, but I do." 

That got a penetrating stare. “If I go take a shower, are you still going to be here when I get out of it?” 

"Jesus Christ, _yes_!" Felix threw up his hands in aggravation. "Yes. I'll be here. Fuck." 

And he was. That was the rub. 

He stormed out of the kitchen and into his borrowed room, grabbed a change of clothes, and locked himself in the bathroom to take a blisteringly hot shower. It was tempting to try to drown himself in it, but not even escaping a disgusting conversation he didn't want to have was worth letting Locus indirectly kill him again. He stood under the spray of water until his skin was bright red and he couldn't stand the heat of it any longer, then got out, toweled himself off, brushed his teeth, shaved his face, got dressed, and then stood there glowering at the door for about three minutes, trying to mentally prepare himself for the inevitable _without_ considering reneging on the promise not to run away.  

It felt a little like he'd been put through a Charon-class frigate's exhaust manifold. His head was buzzing with a hundred different thoughts of varying levels of anger and confusion. And some other irritating emotions he refused to name. His skin felt about six sizes too small and when he moved, he discovered half a dozen areas of discomfort that he could attribute to the bar fight and the sex equally. And he was sober. Stone cold sober. 

_After this, I'm getting a bottle of whiskey and keeping it in my room. This is fucking ridiculous._  

Disgruntled, he yanked open the door, stalked out into his room, and stopped barely half a meter inside. Locus was already there, sitting on the edge of the bed in what passed for his version of relaxed: back straight, bare feet flat on the floor, and hands folded loosely in his lap. He had on a sleeveless shirt, a pair of loose cotton pants, and his hair was hanging around his shoulders, wet but combed. There was a faint shadow of scruff on his jaw, attesting to the fact that he was in such a hurry to beat Felix out of the shower that he sacrificed shaving for combing out his hair. 

A drop of water was slowly inching its way down the side of his neck. Felix forced himself not to stare at it with the same vehemence that he told himself to stop thinking about following it with his tongue. It was mortifying and he hated himself for it. One fuck and he was right back where he’d been five years ago. And maybe it was understandable. He’d never really stopped wanting Locus. He’d ignored it. He’d buried it under hatred and anger and jealousy. But it had never gone away. _It’s different now_ , he reminded himself. _He let me_ die _. He let me die for_ Wash _. There’s no coming back from that, no matter how good he looks._  

They stared at each other across about three meters of carpeted floor that felt like three thousand, Locus studying his face more intently than he liked and Felix trying to will himself a little further into the future where this conversation and the job were over and he was gone. Far away from the temptation that he now had irrefutable proof Locus would always be. It didn't work. The room didn't melt into a tropical beach and a cold, fruity cocktail perspiring in his hand. 

“I didn’t want Washington,” Locus said quietly, apropos to fucking nothing. 

Felix stiffened. He'd thought they were going to have a melodramatic discussion about their ill-advised sexcapade and the prospect of that had been bad enough. “I don’t want to talk about this.” 

“We need to talk about it.” 

That was entirely too reasonable a stance to take on the matter. Felix shook his head in adamant refusal. “Locus—”

Locus interrupted him, a note of angry intensity coloring his voice. “All those years you never listened to me. But you’re going to listen to me now.”

That made Felix stalk halfway across the room toward him before he caught himself. “Killing me wasn’t enough? You have to torture me now too?” He gestured wildly between them. “Fine. Get it over with.” 

For a moment, Locus didn’t say anything at all. He just gave him a look, complete with pursed lips, that appeared faintly constipated. Felix tapped his foot against the carpet impatiently, then crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his wrist where he clearly wasn’t wearing a watch. 

“He’d been what I wanted to be,” Locus finally said, the words coming slowly, as if he was working it out as he spoke. “Then he changed. He became the things I couldn’t reconcile in myself: soldier and civilian, weapon and human.”

It took everything Felix had not to sigh in aggravation. Locus had struggled with it since the end of the war and so had he. Reintegrating into boring civilian life hadn’t been for them and they both knew it. But where Felix had embraced it, Locus continued to pointlessly struggle. Siris had helped for a while, had been the bridge between the conflicting aspects of who they both had been and who they’d become. Then that had all gone to shit and fucking Washington had waltzed in like some kind of goddamn savior. Felix was so fucking tired of hearing about him. 

“I realized that I didn’t want to be what I was,” Locus was saying, looking at Felix in a way that made him wonder if he was actually seeing him. “I didn’t want to be a monster and I didn’t know how to get back to the man I was before. I wanted his help.”

Bitter jealousy spiked through him. Felix snorted dismissively. “Yes, yes. And his perfect, healing cock cleared your existential crisis right up. Skip to the end.” 

“I missed you!” Locus practically shouted at him, everything from his expression to the rigid way he was holding himself making it look like he was going to leap to his feet and start shaking him. 

Felix rolled his eyes so hard it hurt his head. “Oh, right. Sure. I miss the people I kill all the time.” 

“Do you think that was easy for me?” Locus was up and off the bed so fast that every instinct in Felix screamed at him to step back. He refused, steadfastly holding his ground as Locus stalked across the room to him. “I was angry, betrayed. I trusted you and you manipulated me for _years_.”

Reaching him, Locus jabbed a finger at Felix’s chest. It hit his sternum with enough force that he knew it was going to lead to a bruise. “I wanted to leave but you—You kept chasing after them. You brought it on yourself.” 

Slapping Locus’ hand away, Felix took a step forward, crowding into his space until they were nearly nose to nose. “I don’t need a fucking lecture from you, Locus.” He shoved him back a step. “I don’t need your pretend guilt either.” 

Voluntarily, Locus took a second step backward. “Washington understood. He’d lost someone too. The circumstances were—” 

Needing more space than he had, Felix brushed past him. “So don’t fucking care about his sob story.”

And apparently, Locus didn’t care that he didn’t care, because he kept talking like Felix hadn’t said anything. “He lost his partner. I lost mine. He _understood_ and one night it just happened.” 

That was absolutely more than Felix wanted to hear. It was bad enough that he had to hear any of this, but he sure as fuck didn’t want the details of how their perfect relationship started. He wasn’t thinking about what he was doing or where he was going. He was just moving because if he didn’t expend the energy somehow, it was going to explode out of him into violence. 

“And birds sang and rainbows filled the sky. Hallelujah for you.” He was almost at the door and he realized that he had no intention of stopping. “Are we done?” 

Because _he_ was done. He was out of there. Locus could hang around his room like a kicked puppy, wait forever for his forgiveness and blessing or whatever the hell he wanted. Felix wasn’t going to give it to him. 

But Locus didn’t let him leave. He caught up to him, grabbed him by the arm, and spun him around to face him. Felix tried to pull away and Locus just held on tighter, then jerked him closer until he was right in his face. “He wasn’t you,” he told him vehemently.

_No shit_ , Felix thought snidely, but when he opened his mouth to deliver that brilliantly scathing retort, nothing came out.  

“It happened once,” Locus continued, taking advantage of his silence. “Never again. Because I didn’t want him. I never _wanted_ him.” Locus shook him then, so hard that his teeth rattled, and said with painstakingly slow enunciation, “I’ve only wanted _you_.” 

The thought that maybe he’d fallen asleep in the shower flitted across Felix’s mind. Following right behind it was the notion that maybe he’d drowned himself after all and this was all some kind of end of life review. Maybe his mind was taking pity on him for all the horrific revelations he’d received recently and wanted to give him something more pleasant to expire on. A world where Locus had wanted him at some point, instead of simply settling for him because he was the only one around, had to be better than the one where he’d sacrificed him for Wash and his stupid friends.   

He should have let it go. He should have accepted it as something he wanted to hear and not questioned it. But Locus was spouting so much bullshit that he just couldn’t stop himself. Felix wasn’t an idiot. It was galling for Locus to act like he was. 

“That doesn’t make any sense.” He wrenched his arm free of Locus’ grasp. “You _had_ me. We were together for years. I didn’t go anywhere until that cocksucker—literally now, I know, thanks for that—showed up and you fucking killed me.” 

“You changed! We both did. Things changed after...” Locus trailed off, shaking his head. _After_. That thing they didn’t talk about. The thing Felix tried his damnedest not to even think about. Frustration, clear on his face, led Locus to rake his fingers back through his hair. “Nothing was the same. It kept changing. Getting worse. I didn’t know how to get it or you back.” Under his breath, he muttered, “Couldn’t even get myself back.” 

Felix couldn’t dispute any of that without lying through his teeth, which he wasn’t above doing when the situation called for it, but there was something about that particular point in time that wouldn’t let him do it. He never had. It wasn’t _sacred_ , because nothing was sacred to Felix, but it was impossibly tied up in the only truly good memories he had. Maybe it was respect or regret or just plain stupidass nostalgia. Either way, it kept him honest about it even as it drove him away from thinking about it. 

“So you killed me,” he said instead, lifting his eyebrows in an expression of disbelief. 

That was the huge, gaping hole in Locus’ nonsensical argument. Even a killer like Felix knew that one didn’t kill the person one wanted in one’s life. He never got any credit from Locus for anything, but that simple piece of logic was why he’d worked so fucking hard to keep Locus alive, and admittedly, why he’d tried to keep him as tangled up in _his_ life as he’d been. 

“I didn’t—” 

He cut that asinine protest off before it could get started. “You didn’t do anything. It’s the same as pulling the trigger.” He advanced on Locus, staring him in the eyes as he said implacably, “You let me die.”

And Locus looked down. “Yes,” he murmured quietly.

As subtle was it was, that break in eye contact was a victory. It was Locus backing down and admitting that he had done something about which he wasn’t proud. Felix rarely ever won arguments with him and to do it now ought to have been cause for some kind of celebratory gloating. Instead, all he felt was hollow and unhappy.

Like usual, when he was unhappy, Felix sought to spread it around. “So now you regret it?” he asked with skeptical sarcasm.

Locus’ eyes snapped back up and pinned him with their intensity. “ _Yes_ , I regret it,” he said savagely. “Four years, Isaac. Do you understand?” He took hold of Felix’s shoulders like he was trying to prevent him from drawing away, but Felix wasn’t going anywhere. He was frozen to the spot by the unreality of what he was hearing. “Four years missing your complaining, wishing I could hear it again because it would have been better than the silence that replaced it.” 

As idiotic as it was, that made what he was saying more believable than all of the rest of the bullshit Felix had heard thus far. Locus _hated_ his complaining. It was the one thing he'd regularly bitched about for as long as they'd known each other, and even before he wanted to be an emotionless robot, he had been largely unflappable and impervious to all of Felix's annoying habits. To have missed the complaints, he must have _really_ missed him. 

Letting go of his shoulders, Locus caught him by the sides of the face and held him there. It wasn't necessary. He wasn't trying to squirm out of his grip or look away, so it wasn't like he needed to be manhandled into disgruntled compliance. But Locus did it anyway, like they were in one of those hideously disgusting sappy movies Felix had often seen advertised, but would never be caught dead actually watching.

He wanted to say something sarcastic about it, but there were _things_ there in Locus' eyes. Emotions. The sort of emotions that Felix's brain darted away from acknowledging like a petrified animal and he hadn't thought Locus capable of feeling in the first place. And now suddenly he was faced with them and he didn't know what do with any of it. In its own strange way, it was as awkward and uncomfortable as the moment after the sex had been. 

Locus evidently hadn't gotten the awkward memo, because he didn't sound the least bit ashamed of himself when he said, low and fierce, "I have missed you so much." 

"Um," Felix offered stupidly, unable to get the words to work the way they usually did. It wasn't his fault. He'd had everything taken away and given back and taken away again and given back again in some upside-down way too many times in the last week to process all of it with any semblance of suave intelligence. 

Either Locus wasn't expecting brilliance from him or rendering his impossible to shut up ex-partner silent for once was less important than being able to verbalize all of this emotional garbage, because he took the idiotic response in stride and didn't stop. "I know the situation is complicated. I know it isn't ideal." _Understatement of the fucking century, you asshole._ "But we _can_ figure it out. You just need to stop running away from me." 

Emotional shit was one thing. A slight to his pride was another. That required swift, immediately rebuttal.

"I'm not running away from you," Felix retorted, frowning at him in annoyance as he swatted his hands away from his face. "It isn't always about you." Even if it always kind of was. “I was—”

Locus shook his head. "I don't care. It doesn't matter. Just stay." 

_It’d serve you right if I didn’t_ , Felix thought mulishly. He knew that he ought to refuse. After everything they’d been through, it didn’t seem possible to go back to the way they’d been before. Hell, after what he’d done on Chorus, Locus didn’t deserve a second chance. But where the two of them were concerned, Felix knew he wasn’t innocent either. He’d done his own part in tearing them apart. And on top of all that, he would have to be a fucking idiot to refuse something he’d always wanted: Locus giving enough of a damn about him to ask, _to beg_ , him to stay.

In lieu of searching his feelings, Felix searched Locus’ face. "Who was it?"

From the way Locus blinked, he knew his confusion was genuine when he asked, "What?" 

Affecting a tone of infinite patience—one that he borrowed from Locus and that sounded a hell of a lot more sarcastic in his own voice—he prompted, "That you were thinking about." 

Blank incomprehension stared back at him. "When?" 

"In the kitchen," Felix snapped, giving up the ghost of his fake patience. "Who was it? Him? Is that—?" 

The look Locus was giving him was so withering that Felix trailed off to glare back at him. For a moment, neither spoke. Locus, likely because he wanted to continue a lifetime of being a stubborn, uncommunicative jackass and Felix refusing to let him off the hook by withdrawing the question. 

"Answer me," he hissed after the silence threatened to drag on to a full minute. "You aren't—"

Locus' hand closed around his throat, tight enough to choke his voice off at the source. Felix's splutter of outrage ended before it began, smothered by Locus' mouth as he hauled him in for another one of those searing kisses from the elevator. By the time it stopped, he was gripping Locus' forearm like a vice and practically panting for breath. The hand that had been close to strangling him was loose now, Locus' fingers circling his throat without digging into it and his thumb brushing absently over his collarbone.

Through sheer dogged tenacity, Felix managed to rasp out, "Doesn't answer my fucking question." 

Sighing, Locus rolled his eyes. "You really believe I was thinking about someone else?" 

"Yes." 

No one could pull off a narrow-eyed, frowning look that said _oh for fuck's sake_ the way Locus could. "Isaac." 

Undeterred by the tone of censure, Felix let go of him and folded his arms stubbornly across his chest. "You did before." Despite how coolly he said it, there was still something about it that rang just a little too petulant to his ears. In an effort to salvage his pride, he blithely ignored it and hoped it was just his imagination so that Locus wouldn't hear it too. 

Like a tiny ripple across a still pond, something that might have been guilt swept across his face. It was gone as fast as it had come and if he hadn't been staring at him so intently, Felix would have missed it entirely. Jealousy and bitterness told him that it was proof that Locus had been fantasizing about Wash instead of focusing on him. 

"A few minutes doesn't erase a lifetime," Locus replied, disputing Felix's suspicions with his somber tone as much as with his words before he got a chance to call him on it. 

Under different circumstances, that might have been the end of it. _Maybe_. Given the nature of the betrayal, Felix wasn't ready to let it go. "Are you fucking Wash now?" 

"No!" 

His eyes narrowed. “When was the last time you fucked him?” 

Exhaling an explosive sigh, Locus made a helpless gesture with both hands. “I don’t know." Then, with a considerable amount of dry sarcasm, he added, "I didn’t mark it on my calendar.” 

Unwilling to be deflected, Felix just glowered at him. “Guess.” 

A pursed-lip look of deep constipation passed over Locus’ face. It was an expression Felix recognized. It meant his temper was getting difficult to control. “It was years ago. As I _already told you_ , it happened once. It wasn’t memorable.” 

Felix glared at him a little longer, silent and judgmental. Deep down, _very_ deep down, he knew Locus was telling the truth. He didn't want to believe or accept it, doing either felt too much like sanctioning his death and what had happened in the years following it, but he could only insist on ignoring reality for so long before it became too absurd even for him. 

Running his fingers back through his hair, Felix huffed. “I’m not running away.” He emphasized the querulous grumble with a flick of his wrist, gesturing to the room they were standing in. “Obviously.” And even if he did, he would still be in the future. It wasn’t like Locus couldn’t find him if he _really_ wanted to do it. The galaxy wasn’t that big. 

It wasn’t what he assumed Locus wanted to hear. It wasn’t an _I’ll stay_ or an _I forgive you for fucking Freelancers in my absence_ or even something like _Fuck it, you’re too hot for me to stay mad at you._ He was just echoing what he’d said earlier in perhaps a more noncommittal way, but it was agreement, after a fashion. For the duration of the job at the very least, he wasn’t going anywhere. And after it was over, the likelihood of him actually parting ways from Locus for good were slim, whether he wanted to admit it to himself or not. 

That was probably clear to Locus, because he exhaled in a way that sounded an awful lot like a sigh of relief. Because overanalyzing everything he said and everything that he didn’t was as much a part of his life as breathing, Felix heard the barely audible hint of genuine pleasure in his voice when he said, “Good.” 

It was bizarre. He didn’t know what to do with that.

Chewing on the inside of his lower lip as he mulled over his options, Felix shot Locus a sideways glance. “I bought a Pelican.” It was an experimental olive branch. If Locus was serious, if he really wanted to work through their shit, he couldn’t be the only one trying. Even if Felix still wasn’t convinced that he deserved the effort. “I was planning to kill Wash.” 

Which, if Locus knew him _at all_ , wasn’t going to come as that much of a surprise. 

Nodding, he responded was an easygoing, “Yeah.” The corner of his mouth ticked up in what could only be a tiny smile, accepting and amused instead of chastising and annoyed. “I figured.” 

They looked at each other then, and it felt a little to Felix like just on the edge of hearing, he could make out the hushed whispers of all the things they weren’t saying to one another and probably ought to be. He had a feeling that Locus could hear it too, because he wasn’t looking as severe or put out as he usually was. He almost looked—not happy, Locus never looked _happy_ —relaxed. Like he’d reached a place he found acceptable and was content to remain there for a while. 

It was a weird look on Locus. Felix wasn’t sure how to take it. Or what it meant. He wasn’t sure about a lot of things. _Par for the goddamn course_. 

Even weirder was that they _kept_ standing there staring at each other. The very fleeting moment of marginal camaraderie was getting awkward in a hurry and Felix didn’t know what to do about it. He was too off-balance from everything that had come out of the night to sort this shit out. It was late. He was tired, rattled, and awash with too many conflicting thoughts and feelings. Even though he felt as parched as a desert, there was probably still some alcohol left in his system too, muddling the issue without providing any of the mind-numbingly beneficial qualities of overindulgence. 

“Okay, so...” He began, only to suddenly realize what he should have clued into about five minutes ago. _Now what?_  

Under no circumstances was everything hunky-dory between them. Resentment and betrayal couldn’t be erased through one post-coital uncomfortable conversation and on top of that, Locus had yet to demand an explanation for the shit Felix had done to him. But it was coming, because Locus kept bringing it up. And eventually, probably when Felix was least emotionally equipped to deal with it, the day of reckoning was going to arrive. Why it hadn’t yet, only Locus knew, and in the hope of postponing it, Felix wasn’t asking. 

But just because they’d reached a better truce than they had earlier in the week didn’t mean that they were going to return to pre-Chorus habits. They weren’t going to fuck regularly or sleep together. The instinct was there. Thanks to years of bullshit, it felt like an age since Felix had fallen asleep with Locus at his back and all the parts of himself he liked to ignore urged him to grab Locus by the front of his shirt and drag him into bed. And obviously Locus felt some of the same, because he hadn’t left of his own accord. Except Felix was pretty sure he didn’t _actually_ want him there and he wasn’t feeling quite charitable enough to ignore his reservations and make the invitation anyway. 

Clearly it was up to him to toss Locus out. “Why don’t we...” Felix trailed off, frowning. “What the fuck is that noise?” 

Locus heard the beeping too. His face tightened into the expressionless mask he tended to wear whenever he was on a mission or dealing with its details. “Call on the encrypted channel,” he replied, already on the move.

Felix glared at him as he brushed past him on the way out the door. It was one thing to decide he didn’t want to spend the rest of the night with Locus. It was another—and a wholly unacceptable thing at that—for Locus to drone on about how much he missed him and then ignore him for his stupid _work._   

“I swear to fucking god,” he growled, stalking after Locus with every intention of bringing him to a halt. “If you just walked out on me to go take a call from your fucking _boyfriend_ , I’m going to murder you.” 

The beeping continued; the caller was either refusing to leave a message or was obnoxiously persistent. Locus kept walking, largely ignoring his existence and his attempt to snag the back of his shirt until he crossed into his study. Inside, he glanced over his shoulder as he moved around his desk to the computer monitor. 

“Stay on that side of the desk and don’t say anything,” Locus told him quietly. 

Felix’s temper burst like a volcano. “ _How dare—_ ” 

“It’s my informant,” Locus cut him off harshly. Sitting down, he moved the chair closer to the desk, reached out toward the screen, and paused, looking across at Felix over the top of the monitor. “Knowledge that you’re alive and here is an asset I don’t wish to share at this time.” He waited a beat for that to sink in. “Please.” 

_Why you can’t say this shit to start with, I don’t fucking understand._ Felix wanted to shout at him, but there wasn’t time to start an argument over Locus’ inadequate communication skills. Scowling in the futile hope that he read the entirety of his complaint in his expression, Felix leaned against the front of the desk as requested and crossed his arms. Then, when Locus kept looking at him, he lifted his eyebrows expectantly. _Well_ , the gesture said. _Get the fuck on with it._  

Nodding, Locus tapped a button to answer the call. 

Disgruntled though he was, Felix was enough of a professional to kept his attention on the conversation. The informant’s voice was being disguised through a modulator that was more sophisticated than the one Locus had had on Chorus, but it wasn’t perfect. Felix had sufficient experience with the devices to detect the faintly tinny, echoing quality to the sound. He couldn’t see the computer screen, but he knew it wasn’t necessary for him to do so. Locus wasn’t stupid enough to use the video conferencing feature and if the informant was using a voice changer, it was unlikely the call was formatted to be anything other than audio on the opposite end. 

The artificial voice was male, but in a galaxy where there were Spartans like Linda-058 and Kelly-087, that didn’t mean much. Felix could get nothing from the calm, measured tones except that the informant was competent, knowledgeable, and capable of conveying a sense of urgency without sounding panicked or urgent. If he hadn’t been looking right at him, Felix might have thought it possible that it could have been Locus on the other end of the call. 

Apparently Locus’ attacks were making Alvaro squirrelly. He hadn’t connected Felix to him yet, but the increased attention from parties outside of the man’s control were encouraging him to consider redundant failsafes and more extensive backup plans than what he currently had in place. To the informant, the most worrying of these was a decision to bring someone else onto the project as a partner with full access to the body of information and research already compiled for the weapon’s development so that focusing on Alvaro specifically grew less appealing to potential mercenaries. He believed more targets would act as a buffer and the informant felt that more hands in the pot greatly increased the possibility that knowledge of the weapon would spread so far that stopping its creation would prove impossible. 

Alvaro was coming to Gilgamesh personally to conduct talks with potential partners. According to the informant, he had yet to divulge precisely what product he was offering, but had made enough hints about it being a hugely profitable game-changer that there was plenty of legitimate interest. He needed to be killed, the informant insisted gravely, before any of these talks occurred. And Locus, do-gooder in training extraordinaire, agreed. 

The wrinkle in the plan came in the shape of the research facility Felix had seen in those videos Locus had compiled. Located approximately two kilometers under one of Gilgamesh’s inhospitable mountain ranges, it housed not only the prototypes that had already been developed, but an estimated twelve hundred test subjects abducted from various points throughout the Outer Colonies and trafficked in to Alvaro. The facility needed to be destroyed and the captives rescued, which they already knew and Locus was still in the process of drafting a plan of attack. However, the informant expected that as soon as word got out that Alvaro was dead, the facility would go into lockdown and the captives executed while the remaining people in charge tried to figure out what to do. 

Innocent—it took an incredible application of willpower not to scoff when Felix heard that term get tossed out—lives were in immediate jeopardy and still countless others at risk if anyone else got their greedy little fingers on the weapon or its data. Alvaro was scheduled to touch down on Gilgamesh the day after tomorrow, with the meetings to be held the morning after. He needed to be taken off the board the day of his arrival, preferably at night when his associates would expect him to be sleeping, and the facility needed to be destroyed as soon as possible following the assassination.   

“Well,” Felix said into the heavy silence after the call had been disconnected. “We’re fucked.” 

Locus lifted his gaze from the screen and looked across the top of the monitor to him. “What were your impressions?” 

“Uh, I just told you. We’re fucked.” 

“About my source.” 

Felix frowned at him, but when Locus proved impervious to the attempt to will him into focusing on the larger, more important picture, he gave in with a sigh. “Inconclusive. The modulator means it could be anyone. A guy with too much sense or too paranoid or both to use his normal voice. A woman who wants to throw you off. It’s too generic. ” 

Locus nodded. “What else?”

 “If I was more paranoid, I'd wonder if you were conning me.” 

“Why?” Locus asked, openly curious. 

“Attitude. Word choice.” Felix shrugged, finding it difficult to put the feeling into words. “Most people in that one's position would probably sound more worried about the situation. A little less in control maybe. Listening to that was like listening to you going over the details of a mission.” For once, he didn’t mean it as an insult and surprisingly, Locus didn’t take it as one. 

Propping his elbows on the desk, Locus laced his fingers together and brought them in against his chin. His gaze grew abstracted as he stared thoughtfully into the middle distance. It was clearly not a comparison he’d made himself, which Felix thought was kind of hilarious. Right up until he realized that meant that Locus still had no idea how he sounded when he talked to people. _How can someone so intelligent be so completely clueless about something so simple?_ It was a familiar thought; one he’d had hundreds of times since meeting Locus and one that was still frustratingly unanswerable.

“Technological assistance?” Locus finally offered, breaking into Felix’s musings on the marvels of such limited interpersonal skill.

“Not that I could tell.” He thought about it again, reviewed what he knew of available technology—albeit available technology circa 2557—versus what he’d heard, but he kept coming up with the same result. “You’d need AI to mimic human speech that well and I doubt some mid-level arms dealer like Alvaro would be able to get his hands on one of them without someone in the UNSC catching on.”

 “Stolen? Could have been salvaged from a wrecked ship.”

“Maybe, but then it would have contacted the UNSC. Or one of its AI friends. Or whatever.” His knowledge of AI was limited to what he’d encountered during the war, that alien thing on Chorus, and the idiotic Freelancer fragment. “Unless it was rampant. But I doubt a rampant AI would go to these lengths to save human lives _and_ sound like it wasn’t losing its mind.”  

Locus considered that for a moment, tapping the side of his knuckle against his lower lip, before nodding. “Then it’s safe to assume it’s human.” 

“Well, I doubt this jackass is carting a Kig-Yar around as a personal assistant.” 

Another silence followed, longer than the first, before Locus broke it. “I believe the information is sound and the source’s assessment accurate.”

_Of course you do._ Felix wanted to wring his neck. It was like every self-appointed hero immediately abandoned instinct and self-preservation and stupidly trusted everything everybody said. The simulation troopers and Wash had certainly fit that mould back on Chorus. Or maybe it was like some kind of sexually transmitted disease and Locus had picked it up sticking his dick in Wash. 

There was nothing worse than being forced to be the one to try to argue for the logical option in a situation, but faced with Locus’ retarded trust in someone he didn’t know, Felix had to take one for the team. 

“You want to go kill Alvaro, sure.” He pointed toward his room. “I’ll go get my gun. We’ll be in and out no problem. But _you_ _told me_ —“ The end of his forefinger swung around to lock on to Locus’ chest. The asshole always complained that Felix never listened to him? Well, he _had_ been and now it was going to come back and bite Locus and his harebrained idea in the ass. “—that we weren’t ready to hit the secret underground lair and I remember the specs you showed me.” _Look at that. Listening and paying attention, motherfucker._ “We don’t have the equipment or the time to set up something like that in the deadline your nameless buddy just gave us.” 

Unwilling to concede the point like he should have done, Locus just nodded in agreement, his expression bland, and offered, “We need help.” 

Felix half lifted his hands in aggravation. “Yeah, okay. I’ll just dial up One-Eight Hundred-Rent-An-Army and we’ll...” Realization hit him like a gravity hammer to the face. “No.” 

“Felix...” Locus began, in his calming a wild animal voice that historically had only ever exacerbated the problem when he tried using it on Felix.

Eyes wide, face twisted in a rictus of horror and furious denial, Felix shook his head. “Abso-fucking-lutely not.”

“We could—”

“Learn to count,” he snapped. “An army isn’t three people.”

Quietly, Locus said, “You know it is if it’s the right three people.” 

Oh, he knew it. There had been a time when, for all of their arguments and petty sniping at each other, they could have taken on the universe without much difficulty. He and Locus worked together like they were parts of something greater, but when Siris had been added to the mix, their effectiveness as a team had increased exponentially. It was like there had been nothing they couldn’t accomplish. 

And Locus had just had the audacity to equate _Wash_ with their former partner. 

“Mason is _dead_ ,” Felix snarled furiously at him, throwing the one thing they _never_ discussed at him like one of his knives. “And that son of a bitch is no goddamn replacement.” 

It hit its mark and drew blood. He saw Locus flinch. “I know that,” he said softly. “I never said he was.” 

“Oh no?” He was too angry to stop. “Because I distinctly remember hearing you say ‘the right three people’ like thirty fucking seconds ago.” 

“I didn’t mean it like that and you know it.” 

_Stop it. Stop it stop it stop. Don’t go down this road. You’ll never get back if you do._ Restraint wasn’t something Felix practiced often. It was boring and pointless, and where his emotions were concerned, largely impossible to achieve anyway. But under the currents of anger and hurt, he knew that if he took this too far, they were going to have more problems than the one Locus had just placed on the table.

He took a deep breath in through his nose and clenched his hands into fists so tight that his fingernails dug painfully into his skin. But one didn’t cut it. Another lung-rattling deep breath was needed before he trusted himself to say anything else. 

“You want to call up a Spartan, fine,” he told Locus tightly, his jaw so taut with tension that it actually hurt to move it. “But the Freelancers weren’t Spartans.”

“No, they weren’t,” Locus agreed. “But I don’t know any Spartans.” _Really?_ Felix thought snidely. _Because you know everybody else now. “_ And he’s the best.”

That made him jeer at him. “Oh, please. Try to keep it in your fucking pants.” Keeping a lid on his temper was getting harder with every insulting word that came out of Locus’ mouth. “I saw his performance scores same as you.”

The intel they’d pulled from Freelancer’s old files had been quite extensive on that score. Meticulously, boringly extensive. Numbers and statistics, actual and projected, on every idiot that had joined the program. Maybe Locus had committed them to obsessive memory, but Felix had only glanced at the shit before moving on to the more entertaining task of murdering an incompetent lackey. 

Either Locus wasn’t interested in letting this turn into a fight or he recognized that Felix was trying not to explode, because he kept his cool remarkably well. “Time and experience hones a man’s abilities,” he said patiently. “You know that.” 

He did, but he wasn’t interested in being reasonable. “What I’d like to know is when you started thinking with your dick instead of your brain.” 

_Now_ Locus frowned at him. “We’ve been over this,” he replied tightly. 

_Don’t you take an attitude with me, you asshole._ “Yeah, I thought so too. See, because I told you I’d kill him if he set foot in here and now you’re just inviting him in.” Felix threw his arms open wide. 

Sighing, Locus rubbed at the back of his neck in the age old gesture of a man trying to stave off a headache. “If we had time to plan the operation properly, I wouldn’t suggest it.” He said it like he meant it, all serious and sincere, and yet instead of swaying Felix to his side of the argument, it just made him want to punch him. “If either of us knew anyone else we could bring on board for this, I wouldn’t have mentioned him. We need more people. Competent, skilled people. We don’t have them or the time to get them. All we have is him.” 

The day that all Felix had was Agent Fucking Washington was going to be the day hell froze over and Satan threw him the birthday party full of those Earth dinosaurs he’d wanted when he was six years old. “You already made up your mind. Why even ask me?”

“Not yet.” _Bull-fucking-shit._ “I need to know if you’re going to be able to work with him.” 

“I don’t know.” He was being snotty and didn’t give a good goddamn about it. Crossing his arms over his chest, Felix lifted his eyebrows. “Are you going to be able to be in the same room without fucking him?” 

The oh-so-familiar pursed look of constipation made a glorious return to Locus’ face. “Felix.”

Undaunted, Felix glared at him with a flat lack of amusement. Locus kept looking at him and he threw it right back, refusing to back down. It was irrational. They’d just talked about this at a length Felix hadn’t cared to tolerate. But if Locus was set on bringing this asshole into the mission, he was going to make it as difficult and unpleasant as possible.

Locus was the first to cave. “I don’t want to fuck him.” That wasn’t good enough. Felix didn’t look away and Locus, evidently realizing he’d dug his feet in, sighed. “Yes. I can exist in the same space and not even feel attracted to him.”

Taken at face value, his question had been answered. Accounting for the subtle shift in meaning that that _can_ might have held, Felix pressed, “Are you going to?” 

“Now you’re being ridiculous.” 

It was the wrong thing to say. “You left me to die and fucked the enemy!” As far as Felix was concerned, that gave him all the license he needed to act as ridiculous as he wanted. 

“That didn’t happen to you,” Locus returned, lifting his hands in a gesture of frustration. 

Baring his teeth, Felix jabbed a finger at him. “It happened to _you_.”

Like the earlier barb about Siris, that one found its mark too. All signs of Locus beginning to lose his temper disappeared as he sank back into his chair. “Isaac...” 

He was torn between shouting at him or snarling, but when he opened his mouth, the only thing that came out as a quiet, strangely hollow voice that it took him a second to recognize as his own. “When it comes down to me or him, who are you leaving to die?”

Locus shook his head. “It isn’t going to come to that.” 

For not answering the question directly, he answered it just fine. The anger bled out of him and something worse and less useful rushed in to replace it. Hurt. A deep, uncomfortably painful resignation. Seven words were all it took to override the bullshit Locus had been trying to peddle at him all night. Missing him. Wanting him. It only applied when Wash wasn’t in the picture. And if he was, Felix might as well cease to exist. 

Maybe, underneath all the lies and nostalgic determination to cling to familiarity, that was what Locus truly wanted. 

Felix looked him right in the eyes, face as much an expressionless mask as his voice was oddly devoid of emotion. “You don’t know that. And you don’t care.” Turning his back on him, he started for the door. “Do what you want. You’re going to anyway.” 

“Isaac!” Locus called out, the rustle of fabric and creak of the chair telling him that he was standing up. “Would you please—” 

Grabbing the knob as he reached the door, Felix pulled the door after him and shut out the rest of the bullshit Locus was saying. He’d heard enough tonight. And like a fucking idiot, he’d started to believe some of it. 

_Two more days_ , he told himself as he entered his room and locked the door. _You just have to get through two more days. Then you can take your money and get the fuck out of this shitty soap opera. Those two assholes deserve each other._

* * *

Those two days proved to be hell of the blisteringly hot, no-partying dinosaurs variety. The time spent waiting to act drug on with interminable slowness. Locus kept trying to engage with him, no doubt with the intention of talking him out of being justifiably mad at him, and Felix kept conveniently ignoring him. The only time he deigned to acknowledge Locus' existence was when they had to go over the plan to kill Alvaro, but as soon as the briefing was over and Locus opened his mouth to shift the conversation to personal matters, Felix walked out before he got started. 

The plan was simple enough. Their anonymous informant forwarded all of the information about Alvaro's estate on Gilgamesh that Locus had missed, which honestly wasn’t very much, and after going over it, they'd decided on a standard in and out. They were going to set up surveillance early, before the sun went down, case the place once it did, and as soon as Alvaro packed it in for the night, they were going to go in, take down the guards, and finish off Alvaro. In the interest of not alerting anyone before absolutely necessary, they were going to hide the bodies and _not_ destroy the property, no matter how much Felix wanted to blow the whole fucking mess to dust. 

It was getting to go time that proved the most arduous part of the operation. 

Felix spent a lot of it in his room, entertaining himself by poking around the internet. He read the news circulating the Inner and Outer Colonies, ferreted out the active sellers on the black market, and, once he'd exhausted all of those avenues, starting nosing around the UNSC. Something was bothering him, a prickling sense of disquiet unrelated to Locus' shit with Wash. 

It was the high end tech and resources Locus had at his disposal that he was using like he'd picked it all up at the corner store. It was the mystery person feeding him information about Alvaro. It was the insidious suspicion that Locus was caught up in something larger than this doomsday weapon business, though whether it was occurring unbeknownst to him or with his cooperation was something that was impossible to determine with any certainty. From the way he was acting and the things he'd said, it seemed like he was an unwitting participant, trying to do good—whatever that meant—and being used in the process. But Felix hadn't survived as long as he had by being a naive moron. It was within the realm of possibility that Locus wasn't nearly as innocent as he seemed. 

Not knowing where Locus really stood with all of this was eating at him as much as knowing that whatever was going on, he was involved too. Unintentionally, maybe, but just as caught up in it as his former partner. 

Starting with the UNSC seemed the best bet. Whenever there was something strange afoot, sinister, benign, or somewhere in between, the UNSC was always involved. But nothing Felix was able to dig up after three hours searching through the wasteland of the internet suggested that it was in the midst of something shady. There were no new wars. No rumors of secret projects or programs. No more unrest among the Insurrectionists or the remnants of the Covenant than there ever was. Nothing at all was out of the ordinary. 

And maybe Felix was just being paranoid, but no hint of trouble seemed as sure a sign of a shitstorm on the horizon as ample warnings and outright disasters. Though, if it wasn't the UNSC or some shadow-cloaked branch of it like ONI, what the fuck was it? 

Frustrated, Felix decided that the best course of action would be to shelve it for the time being. With Alvaro's estate to infiltrate, his guards to kill, the man himself to assassinate, and that damn underground installation to hit, he had more pressing matters to focus on. But after it was over, whether he was going to remain with Locus for a little longer or not, he had every intention of getting to the bottom of the mystery. If there was one thing he hated, it was being treated like a pawn on some other asshole's chessboard. 

The time he didn't spend holed up in his room he wasted at the bar around the corner. Josey refilled his drinks without hesitation, letting him drink as much as he wanted and then waving aside the bill. Even the food was free. Because for as shitty as the people of Gilgamesh generally were, there was a code of honor among its murderers and thieves and Felix had earned it defending the guy's livelihood against incompetent thugs. 

He wasn't irresponsible enough to drink himself into a stupor. Locus would just bitch at him, which would attract more interaction that he didn't want, and beyond that, he didn't want to head into a job hungover. Fuck knew he'd done it more than once before, but he hadn't enjoyed it. And what was the point of enjoying his work if he couldn't actually enjoy it while it was happening? 

Getting buzzed was good enough for him. A pleasant mood, a cool numbness spread over his thoughts and silencing his feelings, and decent food. It was really all he could ask for at this point. He made idle chitchat with the patrons who came in. He flirted a little with anyone attractive that sat beside him, though he never took any of it as far as it could have gone, and when night started to creep to morning, he turned down an offer for a fuck, bid Josey adieu, and went back to the penthouse. 

It wouldn't have surprised him to find Locus waiting up for him in the living room, radiating disapproval and irritation around the sour frowns and the hard glares, but the common rooms were empty when Felix let himself in. The door to the study and Locus' bedroom were both closed and no sound drifted out from either of them. Maybe he was asleep. Maybe he was sitting at his desk, listening intently for any telltale sounds that would indicate that Felix hadn't returned alone. Or hell, maybe Wash had gotten there early and they'd locked themselves in the bedroom for some reunion sex. 

Not likely, Felix knew, but he still felt his blood heat in jealous anger when he glanced toward the bedroom door on his way to his own room. That it could have happened was practically as bad as if it had. Yet for all of his paranoia, he didn't storm over to the door and demand it be opened to prove that the bastard wasn't lurking around. Locus had told him earlier that he'd sent a message—the way he'd worded it suggested that he'd typed it instead of spoke with him directly—to Wash and the reply back had been that he'd arrive tomorrow evening, most likely around the time they were out killing Alvaro. His emotions rarely responded to rationality or logic, however, and it took some time before he calmed down enough to fall asleep. 

Locus cornered him in the kitchen the next morning with a pile of clothes and equipment for the mission. He didn't say anything about his absence for the bulk of the night before or anything else that would have caused Felix to hightail it back to his room and in grudging return, Felix didn't look around _too_ obviously for signs of any blond intruders. Mid-afternoon, he suited up, stowed his arsenal, and met Locus at the Pelican for a two-hour cloaked flight to their destination. 

"I feel like I'm back in boot camp," Felix grumbled later, after they'd set up surveillance within the perimeter of the estate and were waiting for the sun to finish going down. He was talking to himself as he fussed with one of the pockets on his BDU pants, but Locus was close enough to hear him. 

"It's not so bad," he offered evenly as he glanced over, looking away from the scope he'd been peering into for the last twenty minutes.

"You liked boot camp," Felix dryly reminded him. 

"And you like having so many pockets," came the slightly amused retort. 

Felix snorted. "Not when they're empty." 

Locus twitched a shoulder, then closed one eye and lined the other up with the scope. "So fill them up. There's going to be plenty to take."

Even though he couldn't see it, Felix arched both eyebrows. "Did you just give me tacit approval to loot the bodies?" 

His amusement was more obvious now. "Do you ever need approval?" 

"No," Felix scoffed. Then, with a sniff, he added, "But it's nice to have." 

"Approval granted." 

It was as close to joking back and forth as they'd gotten in _years_. Yet even as it played to Felix's underdeveloped sense of nostalgia, it also pricked at his jealousy. "You're in a good mood," he pointed out warily, making no attempt to conceal his suspicious tone. "Why?" 

But concealment didn't turn out to be necessary. Locus didn't get his back up about it. "This reminds me of the old days." 

Although they had a veritable lifetime of old days behind them, Felix had a pretty good idea which ones Locus was referring to. That did not, however, mean that he was going to make it that easy for him. Not after the willful inclusion of Wash into their lives. 

"Raiding Covenant encampments?" 

Ignoring his sarcasm, Locus replied simply, "Doing those bounty hunter jobs with you." 

He didn't have to spell it out for him any more than he already had with his word choice. The distinction was clear. And Felix couldn't exactly deny it. This was a lot like so many of the missions they'd gone on years ago. Some things, maybe the most important things, were different, but sitting around waiting, always waiting until Felix had felt like he was going to crawl out of his skin with restless boredom, was as familiar as loading a gun. It was probably beyond pathetic and he never would have admitted it to anyone, much less himself, but as he glanced over at Locus—sprawled out on his stomach in a matching dark-colored BDU with the scope of his rifle almost against his face not three meters away—Felix felt a pang of nostalgia. 

Trying to distance himself from it enough to pretend he hadn't felt it, he grunted in disagreement. "Too quiet."

"Hm?" Locus inquired, thrown by what probably sounded like a non sequitur. 

"You aren't yelling at me enough for that." 

Even from where he was sitting, Felix could hear the puff of air as he breathed out too hard. It wasn't an outright chuckle, but coming from Locus, it was pretty close. "Want me to start?"

Felix didn't look at him. "Not particularly." 

They fell into silence then, not quite relaxed enough to be companionable yet not as hostile and tense as it had been earlier. Coming from Locus, that wasn't unusual. He was quiet under normal circumstances. During missions like this, he rarely spoke unless it was necessary;  although he'd never directly said anything to suggest it, Felix had suspected for years that long boring stakeouts were Locus' version of mediation. That he had said as much as he already had was uncharacteristic and strange. At least, it was when Felix was more accustomed to dealing with the Locus he knew on Chorus than this strange, half-assedly personable one. 

It was messing with his head. That was the only explanation he could come up with for the lessening of his anger. Not the implication that doing things like this with him specifically made Locus happy or that some part of him longed for the way they'd been in the past. Not the fact that even though he was being extremely difficult to deal with, Locus still seemed to enjoy spending time with him. And it sure as hell wasn't the insidious possibility that Locus hadn't been lying with all that bullshit he'd been saying, that he really had missed Felix, that he really did want him and not Wash. Felix refused to even consider that one out of a twisted sense of self-preservation. 

No, it was Locus being talkative—for him—in the middle of surveillance. That's all it was.

"Felix," came Locus' quiet voice, breaking into his thoughts. "How many people have you had sex with?"

Of all the things he might have asked him, that was the last thing Felix was expecting. So much so that he had to replay the sounds through his mind to make sure he'd heard them correctly. He gave him a look that was equal parts surprised and confused. "What, seriously?" 

Locus didn't even glance his way. He was still looking through the scope, all business. Even his voice was flat and bland. "Seriously." 

Felix stared at him for a few seconds, waiting for him to follow that up with something derisive, but when that didn't happen and Locus didn't move, he gave up and took it at face value. "Man, I don't know." He thought about it for a few seconds, trying to remember faces since he knew names were a lost cause, and when that failed, moments of pleasure not brought about by his own hand or Locus. "Twenty? Twenty-five? Fifteen?" He shook his head, making a who the fuck knows gesture with both hands. "I don't keep track of shit like that." 

He didn't receive an immediate response and as the seconds ticked by, he felt his bewilderment growing. Of all the things Locus could have asked him, he couldn't begin to fathom why this had been it. _What does it matter? Who keeps track of this shit? Who cares?_  

"How many do you think I've had sex with?" Locus finally inquired, tone faintly curious. 

"Twelve." He didn't even have to think about it. "Thirteen if you're counting that half-assed blowjob you got from Traci Santiago when you were seventeen."

After a long minute of silence, Locus murmured, "...I'd forgotten about that." 

"Remember when we found that rich guy's stash of vintage whiskey in New Alexandria while we were cleaning out that platoon of Covenant assholes?" They'd been sweeping through the financial district, working their way up toward the hospital. The sound of breaking glass had taken them into one of the high-rises and after dispatching half a dozen Unggoy, they'd found the collection in the ruins of some hoity-toity office. "You told me about it that night after you'd had half a bottle." 

And that was where the volunteering of information should have stopped. But for some strange, unfathomable reason, Felix's mouth opened after a brief pause and more words came out. "She got married, by the way. To Robbie Moyer. I think he was a year ahead of you in school? Went into banking." 

Locus glanced over at him then, one eyebrow quirked upward. "How long did it take you to dig that up?"

Felix shrugged. "Half an hour? I don't know, I was a little hungover the next morning." And the one working computer he'd been able to find at the time had been on the fritz. "Wasn't really bringing my A-game to the job." 

Instead of saying anything, Locus just stared at him. It was the kind of stare that was _extremely_ easy to read. 

"I didn't kill her," Felix told him, huffing in feigned offense. As if he'd gone through and killed every person that had come into contact with Locus' dick. "And no, before you ask, I didn't arrange for life to kill her either." 

"How many?" Locus asked, proving Felix's long-held suspicion that he wasn't totally clueless about some of Felix's more questionable and irrational hobbies. 

He didn't quite buy the act. "You don't know?" 

The shoulder that wasn't attached to the hand holding the rifle steady twitched. "I have a suspicion. Not sure if it's accurate." 

It wasn't some huge, life-altering secret that Felix had been determined to take to the grave. He wasn't the least bit ashamed of it or guilty about what he'd done. Some people grew vegetables or knitted sweaters in their spare time. He gathered information about Locus' former sexual partners—he'd never been in an actual relationship with any of them, which was good for them because they would have died a hell of a lot slower than they had—and when the opportunity had presented itself, or he had a little extra money to burn to _make_ the opportunity, Felix had killed them. 

Early on, he’d discovered that there was something therapeutic about erasing people who had once had some kind of claim, however temporary and irrelevant, on Locus. It kept his jealousy from getting out of control and it soothed the possessive, territorial itch that often scratched restlessly at the back of his mind. Plus, it was just fun. Most of those assholes couldn’t even remember who Locus was, but Felix had always made a point to helpfully remind them right before he slit their throats. It seemed rude not to, if he was going through the trouble of killing them for touching what belonged to him. He was just a nice guy like that. 

"Seven," Felix admitted casually, idly wondering if, once the Alvaro business was concluded, he ought to devote his free time to killing the others. _Starting with that bitch from that bar in Casbah..._  

Surprisingly, condemnation for his extracurricular activities never came. He was watching Locus, waiting for the disapproval to set in, but it didn’t. The self-appointed hero of the universe didn’t look all that bothered by the information. He didn’t sound it, either, when he said mildly, “They weren’t worth it.” And then, with an emphasis that Felix couldn’t misinterpret, he added, “None of them were.” 

Felix didn’t agree. With a look as gravely serious as his tone, he told him simply, “I thought so.” 

Another silence settled over them. It wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but it was heavy with a poignancy that Felix didn’t appreciate. They had been something back in the day. Something marvelous and deadly. And now? Now they were a shadow of what they’d been, like ghosts haunting an old house, refusing to give up and move on even after the world had moved on without them. 

“Seventeen.” 

Startled out of a slow slide into maudlin bitterness, Felix turned to look at Locus. “What?” 

“Seventeen,” Locus repeated firmly, and this time Felix realized that he was answering his own question from the start of this ridiculous conversation. 

His first thought was lost to blank surprise. Accepted though his own quirks were, Felix hadn’t ever imagined that Locus had cared about what, and who, he’d done prior to their partnership. To find out that he’d been interested enough to look into it, much less remember them all, was utterly unexpected. His second thought was that Locus was short one: the woman he’d hooked up with during his failed attempt to navigate the future alone. 

But Locus was watching him and as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he gave him a look far too significant to misunderstand. Then, probably because he was used to Felix playing dumb to weasel out of trouble, he said it again with slow deliberation. “ _Seventeen_.” 

_How the fuck do you know about that?_ “How do you—”

Locus kept going like he wasn’t even talking. “Fourteen didn’t survive.” 

Felix’s mouth dropped open. Literally. Like someone cut the muscles in his jaw and there wasn’t anything to hold it up. “You’re kidding.” The flat, painfully serious look on Locus’ face advised him to reevaluate that statement. “You’re not kidding.” 

For a man who was trying to be a paragon of goodwill toward men, Locus didn’t look the least bit repentant for murdering fourteen random people. “I thought they were worth it too.” 

The surreal sense of unreality was a lot like learning he’d unwittingly traveled four years into the future. If the ground disappeared from beneath his feet and he fell down to the core of the planet, it would probably be less jarring and strange than this revelation. 

Side-eyeing Locus, Felix said the first thing he could think to diffuse some of the feelings he was bullheadedly ignoring. “I can even the score a little.” Easily, in fact, since one of the lucky few survivors was coming to them. “I know just the place to start.” 

“No,” Locus said immediately. _Big fucking surprise_ , Felix thought sourly. “That’s not my point.” 

_No shit. I’m not a fucking moron._ “I get your point.” He truly did. They both had pasts the other was irrationally jealous about, they’d both taken steps to establish who belonged to who, blah blah fucking blah. “You’re missing mine.” _Because you_ are _a fucking moron sometimes._  

“Enlighten me.” 

Locus must have cultivated a sixth sense for how to kill any modicum of positive regard he managed to get Felix to feel toward him and their strained relationship in the time they’d been apart, because he seemed hellbent on using it to commit as many murders as possible. Needing to have it spelled out for him when it ought to have been obvious made Felix want to haul off and slug him. 

Setting his jaw, he forced each word out through clenched teeth. “It shouldn’t have been one of the people responsible for killing me.” 

Because Wash was responsible too, whether he’d been standing there next to Locus urging him to let Felix die, pulling the trigger himself, or simply existing as a source of perfection for Locus to obsess over. Felix had already been seeing signs of _that_ in what he’d personally experienced of their time on Chorus. Maybe it hadn’t had time to ferment into whatever it was that prompted Locus to fuck the guy, but the seeds had been planted. They were there in every moment Locus had failed to kill him, whenever he said his name and tried to get him to engage in pointless philosophical discussions, and in all the notes he kept on his observations. And there’d been _way_ too much observing for Felix’s peace of mind. 

“I know.” Once again, it wasn’t the argument he was expecting. There was something in Locus’ eyes—on him, not the scope—that looked like regret. “We all make mistakes, Isaac.” Using his name in the middle of a mission was something Locus had never done. “We all have to live with them. But we _don’t_ all repeat them.” 

Was that blame? It sounded like blame. 

Felix’s eyes narrowed as he stared him down, ready and eager for _this_ fight. “I’m not repeating anything.” 

Locus wouldn’t give it to him. “I know that too.” A little too earnestly, he continued, “Neither am I.”

 The odds were high that he was telling the truth. Paranoia and jealousy said otherwise, urged Felix not to be so fucking stupid and believe more of his bullshit. But all the years they’d spent together counted for something. He _knew_ Locus. Maybe this new path he’d chosen to take was unfathomable, but the fundamental aspects of Sam Ortez hadn’t changed and he knew those better than he knew anything else. 

An out of the way corner of Alvaro’s estate wasn’t the place to hash it out, however. They couldn’t have the conversation they needed to have when they were trying to remain undetected in hostile territory, though Felix wasn’t convinced they were ever going to have that conversation anyway. He didn’t want to have it. That involved too much self-reflection, too much emotional vulnerability, too much spite and hurt getting in the way and twisting him up into a mess. He wasn’t ready for it. He’d _never_ been ready for it. If he had been, Chorus probably never would have happened the way it had.  

“Can we just kill the asshole?” It was a temporary reprieve, but he was trying to buy as much time as he could. Locus would corner him eventually. His persistence with this now, of all damn times, warned him of that much. But Felix wanted to avoid it as long as he could. “Focus on the mission? All that boring shit you’ve always said to me whenever I try to entertain myself?” 

Instead of refusal or disappointment, Locus took it in stride and nodded. Even did some kind of thing with his face where it looked a little less like it was going to set into a block of blank concrete. “Yes. We can kill the asshole.” 

He’d said _the_ asshole, but there were about forty others they had to go through first. The sun sank below the horizon and night settled in without any further awkward personal conversations. The estate remained quiet. There were no unexpected visitors or inexplicable increase in personnel. Everything appeared to be exactly how the anonymous informant assured them it would be. At a quarter past twenty-two hundred, the guard changed. Fifteen minutes later, they got to work. 

Lest Felix turn it into another impromptu competition, they were each responsible for twenty targets. Boring, but typical Locus to try to dampen the fun as much as possible. The guards were evenly distributed between patrolling the grounds and the interior of the estate, making it an almost disappointingly easy sweep. It was further proof that Alvaro really ought to have stuck to conventional arms dealing and not tried to venture into deeper, infinitely more dangerous waters. 

Keeping a firm mental image of the estate's layout and the positioning of his ten targets in his mind, Felix crept through the shadows in search of his prey. Alvaro, or maybe it was whoever he'd hired as his gardener, really seemed to love large trees and topiary bushes. They were everywhere and they provided so much cover that he thought they probably could have moved a platoon of soldiers through in broad daylight and no one would have noticed. 

_Dumbass should've taken up landscaping instead of weapons development_ , he thought in disapproval, as he eased around some kind of animal shaped bush and effortlessly slit a guard's throat. _Might not be dying tonight if he had._  

He hid the body inside the bush and moved onto the second target. And the third. And the fourth. It was too easy. No one saw him coming and there were so many places to hide the evidence of what he'd done. Dragging the bodies over to bushes large enough to hide them in or behind "decorative" fences and trellises was the most strenuous part of the job. Felix was sweating by the time he'd dispatched the last. 

"Status?" he asked softly, taking a second to wipe his forehead and stow a wicked-looking pocketknife he'd just pilfered from his last kill into one of his pockets. 

"Clear," came Locus' voice through his earpiece. The bastard didn't sound the least bit winded from all the manual labor. "Moving inside now." 

"Copy that." 

The great thing about huge, ostentatious mansions was that not only did they advertise where an enterprising individual might find a number of interesting trinkets to acquire, they were also adorned with an overabundance of windows and doors. Felix didn't have to move very far from his current position by a fancy structure that was probably a rich person's version of a shed to find a door just begging to be opened. It was locked, proving that Alvaro wasn't a _complete_ idiot, but Felix had it unlocked in about seven seconds. 

Inside, the decor was as grandiose as the outside suggested it was going to be. No one who liked topiary animals ever had simple furniture when an oversized, gilded chair carved into a representation of the seventh level of Hell or some misbegotten dynasty in Earth's past or whatever the fuck it was would make the pretentious douchebag statement better. Felix took it all in with a roll of his eyes, then set off down the marble tiled floor toward a stairway that was way too majestic for being tucked into an undoubtedly underused corner of the house. 

Alvaro was also evidently a man who enjoyed wasting energy. It seemed like every light in the place was on, making Felix half-heartedly wish he'd brought his sunglasses. _Who lives like this?_ he wondered as he came up behind a guy checking his watch and casually slit his throat. _Like, for real. It's like he got his lifestyle advice from an old gangster movie._  

The other targets weren't difficult to deal with either. Even with all the light taking away an easy source of concealment, the furniture interrupted line of sight for most of the guards. And those that did catch a glimpse of him coming took a blade through the eye before they could call out a warning to their diminishing number of cohorts. Most body he left where they dropped, though occasionally, if it was a little _too_ noticeable, he'd haul one into a closet or behind a huge-ass footstool or whatever half that shit was. 

On his way toward his last assigned target, Felix took a detour through a few rooms that looked like they hadn't been used since the place was built. But the lights were on and they were outfitted in the most expensive, and in a lot of cases the gaudiest, offerings ill-gotten credits could buy. Felix marveled at the terrible taste as much as he inwardly bemoaned the lack of anything worth stealing. Locus liked to carry on like he had no taste whatsoever, but here was proof of what that _really_ looked like. 

"And you think I've got terrible taste," Felix told him archly once they'd regrouped on the landing of the floor below Alvaro's bedroom.

"You do," Locus returned as he slid his pistol out of the holster strapped to his thigh.

Felix spread his arms wide. "I invite you to examine Exhibit A." 

Locus stared at him for a moment, then pointed toward gold-framed painting the size of a mural depicting a group of wild animals from some planet Felix wasn't familiar with bringing down another type of animal. He was assuming they were animals. For all he knew, it could have been an account of prehistoric alien life. From a certain angle—a drunk, possibly high one—the attacking ones could have been ancient Jiralhanae. Maybe.

"Tell me you wouldn't hang that up if you had the room."

He gaped back at Locus in indignation. "I would _not_." His shock was met with raised eyebrows and a challenging stare. "That frame is fucking ugly." 

Humming something that sounded suspiciously like _uh huh_ under his breath, Locus tipped his head toward the stairs. "Come on. Let's finish this." 

"I can't believe you think I'd like something like that," Felix muttered as he climbed the steps beside him. "It's like you don't know me at all." 

"Be quiet," Locus told him, though it was mild and, dare he consider it, vaguely amused. 

The novelty of that amusement was the only reason he obliged him and shut his mouth. It was so rare to hear those words in anything other than exasperation, irritation, or anger that it almost made up for the insult to his eye for aesthetics. But he was damn well going to bring it up later when they were done with all of this.

"Kick it in?" he whispered hopefully when they reached Alvaro's bedroom door and found it locked. 

Locus shook his head. "Too much noise." 

"Boring." Huffing, Felix knelt down to pick the lock. It gave so easily he wondered why the guy had gone through the bother of locking it in the first place. Standing up, he traded the picks for his gun and indicated his readiness to proceed with a sharp nod. 

Carefully turning the knob, Locus opened the door and Felix stepped inside ahead of him, bringing up his gun to fire. But the room was empty. The bed, another ornate affair with posts carved into strange columns, was still made, without even a wrinkle in the purple satin cover. He looked again, searching the corners of the room and the minimal shadows cast by the heavy furnishing, but there wasn't anyone hiding there and nothing appeared to be disturbed. There weren't even any footprints in the thick carpet. Locus' face was set into a hard mask of irritation when Felix swung around to look at him.

"Where the fuck is he?" It was a stupid, rhetorical question that he didn't expect Locus to try to answer. The op had been too easy. Felix had chalked it up to their experience making it a cakewalk, but now a more alarming possibility reared its unwanted head. "Set up?"

"No," Locus said after a moment. "He's here." 

"Because you want him to be?" _You got played. You got fucking played just like every idiot who tries to "help" people and gets taken advantage of._ "Or because—"

"Come on," Locus turned, not waiting for him to finish, and exited the room. "We'll check the study." 

Felix followed him, the back of his neck prickling in unease. "And while we're fucking around, he'll blow up the house," he grumbled darkly.

"He would not risk his possessions," Locus returned quietly. "A man who has invested this much money in such unnecessary stuff will not sacrifice it so easily." 

Ordinarily, Felix would have agreed with that. It was a startlingly perceptive assessment of character coming from a man who historically didn't really _get_ people. But they were backing Alvaro into a corner. And people who got backed into corners had a tendency to do whatever they could to get out of them.

Despite his gloomy predictions, however, nothing happened to them on their way to the study. No sudden arrival of unaccounted for guards. No fiery explosion. There weren't any suspicious sounds echoing through the vaulted hallways. There weren't any sounds at all. And when Locus shoved open the door to the study, there was a man sitting behind the huge desk. 

He was older than they were, with more grey in his hair and beard than black, but none of the wrinkles that would make him actually _look_ old. _Cosmetic surgery_ , Felix thought as he looked up from the computer he'd been working on and saw them standing in the door way, armed and ready to shoot him. Credit where it was due, he didn't startle or yell or gape at them in unconcealed surprise. He studied them intently, dark eyes nearly as piercing as Locus', and otherwise did absolutely nothing.

Felix took it upon himself to force a better reaction than what they were getting. "You gotta chill with the Godfather, shtick, man. It's been done to death."

"I don't know who you are," Alvaro said, looking first at Locus, then switching his gaze to Felix. "But you're the mercenary that hit my production facility." 

Always one to enjoy recognition, Felix gave him a sharp half-smile. "Got it in one." 

"I'm assuming my men are dead and you're here to kill me." Alvaro almost sounded bored, like this was an inconvenience he dealt with on a daily basis. 

"Did the guns—" Felix waved his helpfully. "—give that away or are you just taking a stab in the dark with that?" 

"Why?" Alvaro returned curiously, ignoring the question. 

Locus finally spoke up at that. "You know why. You would not have changed your plans otherwise." 

"Ah," Alvaro breathed, nodding with what looked to be satisfaction. "And that places you as the one responsible for destroying my other property." He looked between them as Felix considered just shooting him and getting it over it. Talk was fun, but he was getting bored with this. "Which has been the purpose of everything." He nodded at Felix. "Including your involvement." 

He smirked mockingly at him. "What, you actually bought my little Covenant sympathizer story?" 

Alvaro spread his fingers out. "It's a large galaxy. Anything is possible." 

"Yeah, well..." Felix firmed up the hand holding his gun. If Locus wasn't going to do it, he was happy to shoot the asshole. "This has been fun, but I'm bored." 

"If I might ask something before you shoot me?" 

It wasn't really going the way Felix had anticipated. He'd expected to find Alvaro asleep and to kill him without ever exchanging a word with him. Once that idea had been dashed, he'd assumed that if they found him, he'd be alarmed. At the very least, angry that they'd killed his goons. But he wasn't acting like an angry or frightened man would. He was acting like someone who had control of the situation and that sat very uncomfortably with Felix. 

Without waiting for an answer, Alvaro continued, "How much is he paying you?" 

Felix frowned. "Who?" 

He nodded toward Locus. "Your employer." 

The accuracy of that was disturbing enough to make Felix wrinkle his nose in a show of denial. "You know what they say about assuming, padre."

"And you are a bad liar." 

_Oh, fuck you._ "Not by half." 

"I am not as naive as you believe me to be. Before, I was uncertain of the situation. Now, it's clear to me." There was nothing Felix hated more than people being reasonable in situations that demanded them be anything but. "And I would like to know."

"Enough," Locus cut in. "Stalling is pointless. No help is coming for you." 

"Yet you didn't shoot me when you entered," Alvaro returned blandly. "You'll have to forgive me for not being alarmed by your threats."

Something occurred then that Felix would have never thought possible. Locus smiled. It was tiny, sure, and maybe only recognizable to him because he knew the difference between Locus' resting disapproval face and his smiles, but it was there. And it was smug as fuck. "You aren't the only one who needed clarity on the situation."

_What in the hell are you—_ It took a few too many seconds to realize what Locus meant. When he did, Felix laughed. "Hell, you know what, since you tried, I'll give it to you. A million credits." 

There'd been a possibility that Alvaro had known they were coming and had come to the study to transmit his secrets to someone else earlier than anticipated. But he hadn't. He would have led with that instead of trying to converse with them like he was the one in possession of the cards. 

"I'll give you thirty." 

"Sorry?"

"Thirty million credits," Alvaro clarified, apparently unperturbed by being found out.

It didn't make any more sense than it had the first time. "For what?"

Alvaro nodded toward Locus. "Kill him."

Felix laughed without really meaning to do it. "You'll give me thirty million credits to kill him? Right now?"

"Yes." 

_Are you for real?_ Felix wanted to ask him. Instead, he gave him a narrow-eyed stare. "And what's stopping you from killing me? Or worse, reneging on the deal?"

"You don't trust my word?"

This time the laughter was intentional. "Buddy, I don't trust anybody."

Locus wasn't saying anything. Felix hadn't detected any movement from his direction from the corner of his eye either. He wanted to glance over at him, see what he thought of this, but he was too much of a professional to take his eyes off his target. 

"Your loyalty goes to the highest bidder, yes?" Alvaro swept a hand, palm upward, across his desk. "I have the means to always be the highest bidder. Kill him. Take the thirty million. Agree to work for me and you'll never want for money again." 

Incredulity warred with amusement at the offer. "You're offering me a permanent job?" 

"Of course. I appreciate a professional who does good work. And your work speaks for itself, Felix." 

_So you did your homework. Good boy._ Chuckling, Felix nudged Locus with the elbow of his free hand. "Hear that, Locus? That's how a man shows appreciation."

"Get on with it," Locus replied, tone a hell of a lot harder than Felix was expecting. 

Confused by his lack of amusement, Felix inquired with open curiosity, "That eager to die?" 

"Eager to not have to listen to the sound of your voice anymore," Locus snapped back. 

If Alvaro hadn't been watching them as intently as he was, Felix would have whipped around to get a look at Locus' expression. He wanted to see his eyes right then. He wanted to see what the fuck he was thinking. But he couldn't do it. All he could do was mutter bitterly, "Yeah. Already figured that one out on Chorus." 

This was getting them nowhere and Felix had reached the end of his patience. 

"All right." With a shrug, he pointed the gun at Locus. Alvaro had enough class not to smile outright, but there was something satisfied and triumphant in his eyes as Felix's finger started to tighten on the trigger. "Oh, Mister Alvaro?"

He didn't give him the opportunity to answer. Without pausing, he swung the gun forward, away from Locus, and finishing pressing the trigger. The bullet took Alvaro directly between the eyes, its momentum throwing him back against his chair. 

Something vicious and cold slid into Felix's voice as he stared at the body. "Money can't buy everything." 

Blood was beginning to run down from the bullet's entry point, glistening in the light. Felix had never understood why people were so squeamish about it. The sight of it was always fascinating and for something so simple, it could turn an impressive number of shades. He was so busy admiring his handiwork that it wasn't until Locus broke it that he realized how quiet it had been after the gunshot.

"You shot him." 

The obviousness of the statement, coupled with the fact that it was coming from Locus _and_ it sounded surprised, tore his gaze away from Alvaro. "Thank you, Captain Obvious," he replied, rolling his eyes. 

Locus' brows drew together as he frowned. "I thought..." Although he trailed off before he finished, it wasn't necessary that he do so.

Staring him down, Felix very slowly arched an eyebrow. It was a challenge to say something utterly stupid that Locus refused to take. He just stood there looking at him, like this was the first time he actually _saw_ him. Felix exhaled a harsh _tch_ under his breath.

"See, that's what you could never understand." Shaking his head, more disgusted now than he ought to have been after killing so many people, he went around the desk and started rifling through the drawers. "No matter what I did, there was always one thing I'd never do and you've always been too blind to see it."

Locus didn't move to help him go through Alvaro's shit, but he didn't need to do it. There wasn't much of anything to be found in the desk. Some pens. A few loose sheets of paper. An organizer that Felix pocketed and handful of thumbdrives at he quickly scooped up just in case they contained useful data. Nothing else. He moved on to examining Alvaro's robe and pajamas for pockets. 

"What?" Locus asked finally. 

Looking up, Felix shot him a disappointed scowl and gestured toward the corpse. "Sell you out." There was another drive in an inner pocket of the robe. He took that as well, then straightened up. "There's nothing else. Let's get the fuck out of here." 

They met no opposition on the way out of the estate. It wouldn't have been surprising to run into reinforcements, but Alvaro had apparently thought Felix would be swayed by the offer and hadn't called anyone in. The Pelican was where they'd left it, still cloaked and undisturbed, and they took off without incident. 

It had all the makings of a quiet trip. They hadn't spoken since Alvaro's study and Felix had immediately taken a seat in the hangar so that he wouldn't have to look at Locus while he stewed in indignant frustration. But just when he'd finally leaned back and closed his eyes, he heard Locus' voice call out to him. 

"Felix." It was loud enough to be heard over the Pelican's engine, but it wasn't sharp or urgent. "Would you come up here?" 

Tempted as he was to feign sleep and ignore him, Felix exhaled a hard sigh and pushed himself to his feet. He didn't rush to the cockpit like an obedient little soldier, but he didn't take his good old time either. The sooner he found out what Locus wanted, the sooner he could go back to his feeble attempt at isolation.

"What?" he asked coolly, as he came up behind the pilot's chair. 

Locus nodded toward the copilot's seat. "Sit down." 

Felix didn't move. "You're going to let me fly?" 

Unless he was unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, Locus _always_ operated the vehicles they used. It didn't matter what it was or how often Felix tried to argue his way into doing it. One very _minor_ incident like fifteen fucking years ago and Locus had permanently revoked Felix's operating privileges. Despite how bizarre Locus was acting in the future, he had a hard time believing those behavior changes extended toward flying. 

"No." _Big surprise._ "I want to talk to you."

_Oh for fuck's sake._ "Oh for fuck's sake. Haven't we done enough of—"

Locus cut the tirade off before it could get started with a very quiet, "I want to know why."

And just like that, Felix's indignation deflated. He didn't need Locus to elaborate on what he was talking about. He knew. That knowledge hung heavily over him as he shuffled over to the copilot's chair and slumped down into it. After a moment, he kicked his feet up onto the instrument panel and crossed his ankles. He didn't look at him. It wasn't easier that way, but it was marginally better.

There were things they didn't talk about because talking about them would tear open old wounds better left scarred over. Things like the war, like Reach, like Mason Wu. And there were things Felix didn't talk about because he didn't want to acknowledge them, much less drag them out into the open for Locus to see. Locus, who had always been strong and indomitable, who had no patience for weakness in himself or others, and who had grown colder and harder and less forgiving as he'd tried so hard to shed what was left of his humanity. It didn't matter that he was trying to turn over a new, much duller leaf and be more personable. Old habits were what kept Felix alive and in possession of what little of value he had. Talking about this was like throwing all of that out the window.  

He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, absently tapping his fingers against his thigh. 

"Because you would have left."

It didn’t get much simpler than that. Felix’s greatest fear had never been the Covenant or death or any of the stupid things that terrified normal people. Since meeting him on that muddy battlefield on a world that no longer existed, Locus had become the focal point of his life. The thought of losing him, of trying to make his way through the galaxy without him, was so horrifying that it preyed on his waking mind and haunted his nightmares. It had driven him to become a better killer, a better marksman, a better fighter. Always better, so that there was never any reason for Locus to look elsewhere in a partner. 

Until Locus had decided that being an emotionless weapon was better than everything and started down a path too narrow to travel with a partner. And Felix, knowing he could never keep up, could never be the perfect soldier Locus wanted to be, had seen where the path would leave him. Alone. Abandoned. Maybe dead. Cast off because Locus had stopped wanting him and didn’t need him. Tangling himself up in Locus’ new life and making it seem impossible for them to survive without the other had been the only solution. 

It came with bitterness and jealousy, resentment and anger. It cost him every part of Locus that made him unwilling to let him go in the first place. But it was better than the alternative. Even after they’d changed.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Locus glance over at him. “You don’t know that,” he said quietly, a hint of something in his voice that Felix chose to interpret as frustration so that he wouldn’t have to accept what it really was.

“Yes I do.”

“ _No,_ you don’t.” Now he didn’t have to pretend. The frustration was real.

Breaking his self-imposed rule of not looking directly at Locus for the duration of this torture, Felix turned his head, managing to catch him while he was still looking at him, and stared him right in the eyes. “People like me don’t get to keep people like you.”

Locus opened his mouth, shaking his head to say something undoubtedly argumentative, but Felix brought up his hand to shut him up. It wasn’t up for debate.

“I know what I am.” A remorseless killer unburdened with morality, worse than some of the worst criminals they used to round up during their bounty hunter days. “And I know what you are.” A marvelous killer whose cold precision could put Felix’s heartlessness to shame, but who also cared enough about meaningless garbage to have the capacity to do good things and be better than the best. “I was afraid and it fucked me up. I don’t have a better answer for you because there isn’t one. That’s why.”

They looked at each for a few more seconds, then Locus straightened, turning his attention back to flying the Pelican. Felix propped his elbow on the bulkhead to his right and leaned into his knuckles as he stared out into the darkness. There were lights out there, but they were currently flying over one of the more rural developments, still about half an hour out from the city. Even if he could have slept, there wasn’t enough time to catch a nap before they landed and needed to suit up for the next, far less pleasant leg of the operation. But he could relax a little, try to mentally prepare himself for dealing with Wash in a way that wouldn’t end in bloodshed.

“I don’t want him here,” Locus said, breaking the silence before it had really gotten a chance to settle in. 

_From one miserable topic to another. Jesus fucking Christ_. “You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Felix returned, managing to keep the comment free of sarcasm. 

It probably wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t. Locus continued on like he hadn’t said anything. “But I don’t want to lose you even more.” 

Frowning in confusion, Felix tilted his head back so that he could see him without having to sit up. “That doesn’t even make sense.” 

And Locus wasn’t going to be able to make that happen, either, but damned if he didn’t give it a try. “Alone, our chance of successfully completing this mission is very low.” Felix opened his mouth to argue that, but Locus ignored him. “With his help, it rises considerably. That’s what matters to me. I’m not willing to take unnecessary risks when we don’t have to.” He hesitated, then added, “Four years was long enough.” 

Dramatically conflicting emotions strangled every attempt he made to respond to that. Which ultimately was probably for the best, because he was outraged enough that he really wanted to start screaming at him. _You brought him here to_ protect _me?! I don’t need anyone’s fucking protection, much less his!_ Everything about it was insulting and degrading and fucking _stupid_. He wanted to break Locus’ perfect fucking face for it. But underneath the explosion of fury was the recognition that, insults aside, Locus was trying in his retardedly backhanded way to say that Felix’s life was important to him. It was just barely enough to keep his temper in check.

Very slowly, Felix took a deep, drawn out breath and exhaled. “You really need to work on your communication skills,” he told him tightly. “Because that was the most insulting thing I think you’ve ever said to me.” 

Locus sighed. “That was not my intention.” 

“I know. That’s the only reason I didn’t stab you.” However, he still _wanted_ to stab him for it. 

Maybe that was obvious, because Locus started to open his mouth, then apparently thought better of whatever it was and immediately shut it. And Felix knew, he absolutely fucking _knew_ , that he should let it alone. They were already teetering on the edge of one violent meltdown. They didn’t need another one pushing the envelope. But he’d never been very good at letting shit alone when he should. Especially where Locus was concerned. 

“What?” 

Hesitating for a few seconds, Locus finally said, with extreme care, “We could try again.” 

“I don’t think so,” Felix replied warily, knowing exactly what Locus was talking about without having to ask for clarification. 

“I do.” 

_Why did it take dying and fucking someone else for you to become so sure about us?_ Bitterness was starting to well up inside him again. “No, that’s not—”

“It isn’t too late, Isaac. This is a second chance.” 

_And now you’re an optimist. A humanitarian optimist. Fucking wonderful._ “It’s not that simple.”

“I know.” 

_Do you?_ “I don’t trust you.”

Locus nodded like the paragon of equanimity. “I know that.”

_You sure are happy to ignore all the things you claim to know like a goddamn idiot._ Thinking that maybe he needed to hammer it home a little harder, Felix sat up and swept his arm backward as far as the chair would allow, hoping that the visual aid will help Locus get with the program. “And you _clearly_ don’t trust me either, if that stupidity back there is any indication.” 

Proving that he hadn’t completely lost his mind, Locus didn’t deny it. “We can earn it back.” 

Exhaling hard, Felix lifted his hands in confusion. “What’s with all the optimism lately?” 

Either Locus had spent some time at a monastery somewhere meditating and learning the answers to the mysteries of life or whatever bullshit people did in places like that or he’d picked up a habit of reading fortune cookies. “Few things worth doing are easy,” came out of his mouth way too sincerely for how serious he sounded. 

The obvious thing to say there was no. Or if that was too simple, any of its variations. _You’re a fucking asshole. I hate you. Hell no. Do you think I’m stupid?_ But like every other situation involving Locus and the obvious solution, Felix wasn’t saying it. He was trying to fiercely think it at himself so that it would come out of his mouth in some form that made the denial clear and unarguable. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t happening.

“I don’t know,” was the best he could do. Followed up with an equally uninspired and muddled, “I can’t just forget what happened.” 

“I’m not asking you to forget.” All of this understanding and patience coming from a man who was typically anything but understanding and patient where he was concerned was almost suffocating. “I’m asking you to take a chance.” It was too earnest to be a manipulative attempt at playing on Felix’s love of gambling, so he couldn’t even get defensive about it. “Try again.”  

He didn’t fold, but he couldn’t muster up a decisive rejection either. Felix knew what that meant. Locus damn well knew what that meant too. _Goddamn motherfucking shit._  

Groaning in irritation, he hunched forward and raked his fingers back through his hair. “Look, can we talk about this later? Preferably _after_ the op?” After the op. After Wash came and went back to wherever the fuck he was coming from. After a stiff drink to salute the death rattle of his dignity.

Locus could probably hear it too, because he agreed calmly, without hesitation. “Of course.”

_Shut up, you smug asshole_. Scowling, wishing it was more biting than he knew it was, Felix slumped back against the bulkhead. “Now stop talking to me. I want to pretend to sleep before I have to deal with your piece of shit boytoy.” 

Although he wasn’t looking at him, he could see the disgruntled look Locus was giving him in his periphery. Felix sniffed innocently and ignored him. Locus was getting off easy and he knew it. _Deal with it. As long as I have to put up with it, you are too._  

* * *

 A familiar armored shape stepped out of the shadows as they exited the Pelican. Although it was dark out there on the roof, there was enough ambient light from the city around them that Felix could see clearly Wash's face as he removed his helmet. It didn't look like he'd changed much over the years. Blond hair still cut short, pale skin still in need of some sun. There were no disfiguring scars or horrific wrinkles ruining his stupidly handsome face and he wasn't sporting any unsightly bald spots.

It was such a fucking disappointment.   

Felix caught Wash looking at him, but before he could sneer at him or make a snide remark, the asshole shifted his attention to Locus. And then kept looking at him. Studying him. There was an intensity to it that Felix _really_ didn't appreciate. Especially when he didn't know why it was happening.

In the most transparent attempt to head off an incident that Felix had ever witnessed, Locus stepped forward to greet him. "Sorry we're late."

"What happened?" Wash had the audacity to look concerned. 

Unable to keep his mouth shut any more, Felix cut in, deliberately keeping his voice light and casual. "Nothing. We just _really_ didn’t want to see you." 

"Felix," Locus said softly.

Hearing the warning in it, Felix shot him a nasty, poisonous glare. _Don't you fucking dare take his side._  

From the other side of Locus, he heard Wash sigh. The close proximity meant that he heard him when he followed the exhalation with a sarcastic mutter under his breath. "I see this is going to be pleasant." 

Evidently Locus decided that ignoring the problem would make it go away, because he didn't comment on any of it, choosing instead of answer Wash's question with a seriousness it didn't deserve. "There was a minor change of plans." 

"We still on schedule?" Wash asked, playing up the intent, serious soldier so outrageously that Felix wanted to punch him. 

And Locus just ate it up. "Yes. Come." He gestured for Wash to fall in as he started toward the stairwell. "You can look over the intel while we get ready." 

_Just throw in some bullshit military jargon too, why don't you? Fucking assholes._ Scowling openly, Felix pointed sharply to the space in front of him. "Stay where I can see you." 

"Oh, right," Wash replied sarcastically, rolling his eyes. "Because the major concern here is that _I'm_ going to stab someone in the back."

Locus said something to him then, too quietly for Felix to make out more than the low rumble of his voice, and after a moment spent looking at each other, Wash shrugged and did as Felix had ordered. The fact that he only did it because Locus had apparently told him to grated on Felix's nerves so badly that he stewed over it the entire way into the penthouse.

No one said anything until they were inside and even then, it was just Locus directing Wash to his study to peruse the information he'd gathered on the research facility. Felix lingered outside the common area, watching until he was sure Locus had gone off _alone_ into his room, then stalked into his own to put on the armor. 

He would have liked to have gotten a shower first, but there wasn't time for such a luxury. Not only did the mission require them to get their asses moving before someone found out Alvaro was dead, Felix didn't trust leaving Wash and Locus alone that long. Besides, the armor took long enough to get into as it was. Years of experience getting in and out of it in a hurry paid off, however. A process that would have taken a rookie more than half an hour took him about fifteen minutes. He was fastening the last gauntlet into place when the sound of tapping against the door interrupted him. 

It sounded like armor. Warily, he went over and opened it to find Wash standing on the other side, doing his best impersonation of Locus at his most expressionless. Felix scowled at him. "What." 

Wash dead-eyed him right back. "We need to talk." 

Felix snorted in contempt. "Like hell we do." The words were barely out of his mouth before he went to shut the door in Wash's face.  

Catching it, Wash shoved it back open and stepped forward, coming inside despite Felix's best attempt to block him. "Like it or not," he said firmly, talking over the protest Felix was trying to make at having his space invaded. "We're on the same side for this and I'd like to make sure it stays that way." 

That was a pretty reasonable way of looking at it. Felix sneered at him. "Scared?" 

The taunt didn't score a hit. Wash's expression remained unchanged. "Concerned for a friend." 

Bringing Locus into it was a mistake. Felix bared his teeth. "Don't you dare—" 

"He's my _friend_ , Felix," Wash said sharply, cutting him off. "Do you know what that is?" 

Not to be outdone in the snide comment department, Felix volleyed it back with a mocking, "You fuck all your friends, Wash? There's a word for that and it isn't called being a _friend_." 

Wash's hand shot out and grabbed him by the chestplate of his armor so fast that when he jerked him forward, Felix was too caught off guard by the ballsy move to combat it. They ended up nose to nose, with Wash right up in his face, scowling at him. Felix curled his fingers into a fist, getting ready to punch him in the face for having the temerity to touch him, Locus and his stupid opinions be damned. 

"Now you listen to me, you pissy little bastard," Wash growled, shaking him so hard that he momentarily forgot about slugging him. "That man loves you. Hell if I know why, but he does. Even after all that shit you pulled. So shut the fuck up for once in your goddamn life and listen to me." 

The order was punctuated by another infuriatingly insulting shake, but it didn't really register with Felix's brain. He was too hung up on Wash—paranoid yet still bumblingly idiotic Agent Washington—growing a pair and haranguing him like this. He was absolutely going to kill him, there was no doubt about it, but morbid fascination kept him still and silent long enough to see how bad the wreckage was going to be once this crazy train finished derailing.  

"I'm here to make sure that my friend and the piece of shit he's so wrapped up in—" The metallic thud of Wash's armored finger impacting with Felix's chestplate served as further emphasis as to which piece of shit he meant. "—make it out of a dangerous situation alive. So that's what I'm going to do. And _you_ aren't going to fuck that up unless you want to learn firsthand why I got picked for the Project." 

If it hadn’t been so offensive, Felix would have laughed his way through the whole spiel. As it was, there was still a hint of that laughter in his voice as he asked, “Are you... _threatening_ me?” 

Wash must have missed the part where Felix wasn’t the least bit cowed by his tirade or impressed by his attempt to play badass. “It isn’t a threat. It’s a promise.” 

_Which action movie did you steal that from?_ Dozens of snide, sarcastic comments were piling up on his tongue, each vying for the privilege of making it out of his mouth and wounding Wash with its acerbic wit. But something was prickling Felix’s instincts in warning, like he’d just stepped into view of an unseen sniper’s scope without knowing there was one in the vicinity. And he trusted his instincts the way he didn’t trust people. 

“Why?” he asked warily, eyeing Wash suspiciously. _What the fuck am I missing?_

Wash gave him a look of pursed-lip disgust. “I’ll get you a dictionary when we get back so you can familiarize yourself with the definition of friendship.” 

“It’s not, though, is it?” 

Confusion wasn’t particularly attractive on Wash’s face when he was feigning it. “What?” 

There it was. Felix’s eyes narrowed to venomous slits as he stepped forward, pushing Wash back out of his space. “You son of a bitch.” When all he got was a wary stare, he hissed, “He’s _mine_.” 

Dryly, Wash retorted, “I think everyone in the quadrant is aware of that.” 

The only reason Felix wasn’t slitting his throat right then was the very real threat of Locus shouting at him for fucking up the mission and carrying on like the world was ending if he followed through with it. “I mean it. If you try anything, I’ll kill you.” 

Wash must have erroneously assessed that the threat had passed, because his wariness disappeared under a tidal wave of exasperated irritation. “I think you’re missing the point of this conversation. I’m trying to assure you that I _won’t_ be trying anything so you can stop acting like a territorial idiot.” He sighed, heaving his shoulders in what looked like an aborted motion to throw his hands in the air. “Jesus, do you ever listen to anyone but yourself? I’m not a threat to you.” 

Now Felix did laugh. It burst out of him so strongly that he thought he was going to choke on it at first. “You’re damn right you’re not,” he managed, once he’d gotten himself under enough control that he could breathe. 

Through clenched teeth, Wash ground out, “Where Locus is concerned.” Felix kept smirking at him, and after a moment of being subjected to his smug superiority, Wash gave up trying to convince him that he was a threat to anything. “Okay? Are you hearing this? Can you stop acting like a child long enough for my friend to survive the mission and live miserably ever after with you?” 

Although Felix would be damned if he was going to give Wash the satisfaction of knowing that the comments were getting under his skin, he was taking some pretty serious fucking offense to the constant accusations that he was making Locus’ life hell. He’d spent the majority of _his_ life making sure Locus walked out of every situation he walked into. _He_ wasn’t the problem. 

“And what do _you_ get out of that?” he challenged Wash.

“I don’t get anything out of it.” _Liar. No one does anything for nothing._ “I know this might be hard for someone like you to understand, but sometimes caring about someone other than yourself means you put their happiness above your own.” Wash paused, gave Felix a once over, and then added, “No matter how stupid you think it is.” 

“You would know a lot about stupidity, wouldn’t you?” There were half a dozen ways that Wash could take that. Felix meant every one of them. He pointed to the door. “Unless you want to lose one of those pretty blue eyes of yours, get out. I still have shit to do.”

Wash shook his head, his fed up and disappointed expression eerily similar to the one Locus always used, and left. Felix watched him go for a few seconds, then slammed the door and finished getting ready. He slammed his knives and guns to their magnetic holders a little too hard and almost dropped one of his ammunition cartridges. Wash had overstepped and Felix was going to pay him back for it. For barging into his room, for daring to lecture him like he had any say in any part of _their_ lives, and worse of all, for trying to take the place that had always belonged to Felix. 

Snatching up his helmet, Felix stalked out into the common room. Wash was loitering in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and reading over the contents of one of Locus’ datapads. Scowling at the show of innocence, he was about to call the asshole on it when Locus walked out, rifle slung over his shoulder and helmet in his hand. He must have sensed that something was up; although he didn’t pause, he did give each them of a searching look as he approached. Wash pretended he was too absorbed in the intel to notice. Felix just met Locus’ eyes and frowned at him. 

Of the two of them, Locus had always been the cautious one when it came to picking battles. Apparently that hadn't changed, because he didn't ask. He met Felix's eyes for a second or two, then turned toward Wash. 

"Do you have any questions?"

Wash finally looked up from the pad. "I don't think so. I reviewed as much as I could on the trip here." He tipped the pad in Locus' direction. "This filled in the holes pretty well." 

"It will take us approximately forty-five minutes to reach the facility. You may bring it along if you want." 

Shaking his head, Wash set the pad down. "It's not necessary. I've got it. Layout of the facility, location of the captives, evac route to the transport."

In the least surprising gesture of the twenty-sixth century, Locus nodded in approval. "How's your ammunition?" 

"Fully stocked. Unless they've moved an army in there without your informant's knowledge, I shouldn't have any problems." 

Felix couldn't stop himself from grimacing at that, though in all fairness, he didn't try. _We get it, you arrogant bastard. Discount Spartan thinks he can take on an army._ It was a shame he didn't actually know any Spartans. Watching one of the IIs wipe the floor with Mister Better Than You Freelancer would have been the best entertainment Felix had had in a _long_ fucking time. Even one of the IVs could have stomped him. And then Locus would have had to admit that the Freelancers weren't any better than them and get over this ridiculous fascination with Wash. 

Maybe, once this was over, he could acquire a Spartan. Hire one. Or failing that, hijack one of their ships and make one help him. It was an intriguing possibility that required more consideration later.

Locus had been talking, but lost in his musings as he'd been, Felix hadn't heard anything he'd said. He was just tuning back in when he heard Locus say, in his group leader voice from back during the war, "Then we're ready? David?" 

For half a second, he wondered blankly who the fuck David was. Right up until Wash nodded and said, "Ready, Sam."

_Since when are the two of you on a first name basis?_ Felix wanted to demand, but as he was opening his mouth to ask, Locus looked at him and asked, "Felix?" 

It would have stung a lot less if Locus had simply struck him. The words didn't immediately come, but when they did, his voice was a waspish hiss. "Fuck you." 

He was out of the penthouse and halfway up the stairway to the roof before he realized that he was moving and once he did, he kept going, his furious footsteps falling heavily on the stairs. _Boom boom boom boom_ echoed harshly through the stairwell and, with how quiet the whole building was at this hour, could probably be heard outside of it. Felix didn't care. The vicious, petty part of him hoped that it was loud enough to wake people up. 

The air felt icy on his flushed face when he stepped outside and for a few seconds he stood there in the doorway, breathing it in. Letting it settle in his lungs and spread some of its chill through the rest of his body. He wanted to kill someone. Wash, specifically, but in lieu of his true target, he was happy to kill sixty or so guards and scientists. Possibly more. Given how livid he was, it wasn't hard to imagine that he'd end up doing the bulk of the slaughter.

When he started moving again, his feet took him away from the Pelican to the edge of the roof. Gilgamesh might have been a shithole where the dregs of society ended up, but the planet itself was nice enough. And the lights from the city looked pretty from this height. Being idle wasn't a state he often found himself in, but every once in a while, he supposed it wasn't terrible to stop moving and just look at shit for a little. Try to breathe through the rage. 

So of course, his tiny moment of not-quite peace was shattered.

"Felix..." Locus said softly from behind him.

He didn't turn around. He didn't respond, either. The bastard didn't deserve acknowledgement. 

"I wasn't—" 

Not wanting to hear whatever the excuse was going to be, Felix snapped, "Just shut the fuck and let me alone. Prep the Pelican or something so we can get this shitshow over with."

Locus didn't listen to him. "Isaac." 

"Don't." It was too late for that shit now. _Far_ too late. "Just fucking don't."

But he didn't budge and he didn't shut up. "He doesn't know your name. I thought you'd—"

Sometimes, it was better to remove himself from the situation when ignoring it failed to make it go away. "I don't care." Spinning around, Felix brushed past Locus and stormed over to the Pelican. "Get your shit together and let's fucking go." 

* * *

The flight was a tense one. No one spoke unless it was to relay mission-specific information. ETAs, last minute checks, and once they were within the facility's airspace, an announcement of what the Pelican's sensors had picked up. It wasn't much. The bulk of the facility was too deep underground for the ship's instruments to penetrate, but the surface was quiet. No vehicles were approaching or departing. There was none of the urgent bustle that might have been found had word of Alvaro’s death reached the place. There was no human activity at all. So far, it appeared that everything was progressing according to plan. 

Felix kept to himself on one side of the bay and Wash stayed on the other. The center was a no man's land that neither attempted to cross in any fashion. Felix didn't look at him and not once did he feel the weight of Wash's gaze on him. If he had, he wasn't sure that he wouldn't have done something that would have jeopardized the mission. 

When they began their descent, he jammed the helmet on. As it locked into place, hiding his face behind the dark composite of the visor, he felt just a little of his tension abate. It wasn't much, but it took the worst of the edge off of his homicidal urges. 

Locus landed the cloaked Pelican near the hidden access tunnel they were using to break into the facility. Best case scenario, they would be able to pick it up on their way back out. Worst case scenario, it would get destroyed along with the installation. As an extra precaution on the off-chance that someone found it first or some part of it survived the explosion, Locus erased the data on its computer before they disembarked and everything of any value went with them inside. 

They were just as quiet on the descent through the access tunnel as they'd been on the Pelican, though this time they could all pretend that it was because they were employing stealth to infiltrate the installation and couldn't afford any unnecessary chatter. Locus took point, with Felix and Wash keeping pace with him on either side, but the separation did no good. The hostility between them was palpable. 

As the informant had promised, the tunnel was unused. There were no guards patrolling its length, no researchers using it as a quick detour through the facility's twisting tangle of hallways, no escaped captives trying to scuttle their way to freedom. Felix kept his eyes on his HUD's readouts despite the emptiness, monitoring air quality, heat signatures, and detectable motion for anything out of the ordinary. 

At the bottom of the tunnel, they paused to check the exits. 

"You know where to go?" Locus asked Wash quietly. 

"Yeah," Wash responded easily. "I'll check in once I reach the holding cells." 

Locus nodded. "The power core's three levels down and a kilometer away from your destination. If you encounter difficulty..." 

It didn't need to be said out loud. Wash didn't let him waste his breath. "I'm on my own. I know. If I run into trouble, I'll alert you. But don't worry." Felix rolled his eyes in disgust. "I can handle it." 

He rolled them again when Locus replied, voice laden with an understated confidence, "I know." 

That was it. Felix couldn't stand it anymore. "You two gonna kiss now or can we fucking go?" 

The visors prevented him from seeing their eyes, but he knew they were looking at him. Wash didn't respond directly. Through the comms, however, Felix heard Locus sigh. 

"Twenty minutes to get into position," he reminded them, after a moment's long-suffering silence. "Ten to complete our tasks. Twenty more to get to the transport in the launch bay at the southern side of the installation." 

"Got it," Wash agreed gamely, like a good little soldier. 

"Clock's ticking," Felix added, not bothering to smooth the sarcasm out of his voice.

But it got them moving. A sensor sweep of the blast doors to ensure that there weren't any surprises waiting on the other side and they went their separate ways.

Things didn't get any chattier once they were on their own. Locus was too focused on the mission and Felix still didn't feel like talking to him. It would have been nice to run into some gun-toting guards so that he could take out a bit of his anger and frustration on something, but the intel continued to prove sound. The blueprints led them precisely where they claimed to lead and the pages of schedules and security rotations allowed them to bypass any unwanted attention. Locus set a quick, no nonsense pace that prevented any momentary detours into the numerous chambers that opened up off the main corridors. It was boring and anti-climatic, but because of it, they reached the power core a few minutes ahead of their projected ETA. 

Wash checked in while Locus was breaking into the computer system. He'd reached the containment cells without incident and was in the process of freeing the prisoners. Locus murmured an acknowledgement, though he didn't say anything else. If they were different people, Felix might have thought it had something to do with trying to make peace with him for what had happened earlier. Because they weren't, he knew it was because he was too wrapped up in his work inputting the overrides to have a conversation. 

For his part, Felix poked around in the system, looking for signs of discovery. He accessed the CCTV channels and flicked through them, scanning the various levels and rooms for activity. Most of the rooms were empty. At this time of night, the facility was operating on a skeleton crew of only the most dedicated researchers, the guards, and those tasked with making sure the prisoners didn't die from mundane causes like starvation, dehydration, or disease. He found Wash in one of them, prying open a cell door and gesturing a huddled group of dirty, desperate looking people out. Had he felt more ambivalent toward Wash or been more concerned about human interest stories, he might have watched a little longer out of curiosity, but he hated Wash and didn't care about the prisoners. There was no contingent of guards coming down the hallway or firefights taking place that they needed to be aware of. He changed the channel. 

The instructions for detonating the power core that Locus had been given were straightforward and without any security measures fighting against him, he got the job done in record time. Felix hadn't found anything suspicious on the surveillance system. After all the build up and urgency, it was actually kind of a disappointment for the job to go so smoothly. Sighing, Felix keyed off the system and stepped back from the terminal. 

And the deafeningly shrill shriek of an alarm rent the silence. 

"What did you do?" Locus demanded, twisting around like he expected to see Felix up to his elbows in computer components, willy-nilly tearing wires out of everything.

Even though Locus couldn't see it, Felix scowled at him. "I didn't do anything! Why are you blaming me?" 

It was a rhetorical question. Felix knew why he was blaming him. Locus blamed him for everything whenever something went wrong on a mission. Half the time, it probably _was_ his fault. He was impetuous, he liked to improvise, and it was always a gamble whether he'd actually been listening during the entirety of a briefing or if his mind had wandered off to more interesting things somewhere in the middle of lists of names and shit he didn't care about. _This time,_ however, he hadn't done a fucking thing and it was one more insult on top of the slew of them that Locus had been piling on since Wash had arrived. 

"We have a problem," Wash's tense voice cut through whatever response Locus had been about to make. 

"No shit," Felix snapped back, breaking his self-imposed rule not to acknowledge Wash's existence any more than absolutely necessary. "Was the alarm your first clue or haven't you noticed?" The flashing red emergency lights could have also been a hint, but if the obnoxious noise wasn't cluing him in, Felix figured the lights were probably too subtle.

"One of the prisoners panicked," Wash said, ignoring the provocation. "Bolted the wrong way and ran into one of the guards. They know we're here." 

Felix shot Locus a look at that— _Hear that, asshole? Your precious perfect Freelancer fucked up! Not me!_ —but he didn't appear to be paying attention. His head was canted slightly to the side, the front of his helmet pointing toward the wall. Considering what this meant for the plan and how to rework it without failing to complete the mission, most likely. Hopefully imagining strangling Wash for screwing up, though Felix was well aware that that was probably wishful thinking on his part. 

"Status?" Locus asked Wash, after a short pause. 

"All other prisoners accounted for. We're en route to the transport," came Wash's report. 

"But?" 

Wash sighed. "The guard killed the prisoner. I shot him, but not before he called for help." 

"They'll be coming to your location." Locus exhaled, then stepped away from the terminal he'd been working at. "How close are you to the ballistics lab on level four?" 

There was a few seconds of silence. "Still pretty far out." 

"Can you be there in twelve minutes?" Having an inkling of what Locus was going to suggest, Felix started to shake his head. 

"Yeah, I think so."

To Felix's utter lack of surprise, Locus ignored his warning. "We'll meet you there." 

"Roger that.”

As Wash disconnected, Felix rounded on him. "Are you crazy? We need to get out of here! Not play—" 

"Seal those doors," Locus cut him off, gesturing toward the entrance they'd used to access the power core. "Starting detonation sequence now."

"I can't believe you." With the comms, it wasn't possible for Locus not to hear Felix's mutter, but he wasn't expecting a response. Good thing, too, because he certainly didn’t get one. 

Moving over to the doors, he keyed the locking mechanism, then pried the control panel off the wall and tore out the wires. It would take either a mechanic or explosives to get through the doors now, and by the time either was brought to the scene, it would be too late. And with Locus having disabled the power grid's computer, there was no way for it to warn the installation's inhabitants that anything was wrong in the first place.

"Twenty minutes," Locus told him sharply. "Set your timer now." 

Felix complied, setting the countdown in the upper right corner of his HUD. _This is what I get for wanting a little excitement_ , he thought sourly, glancing at the steadily decreasing numbers as he joined Locus at the ventilation shaft they were using to exit the room. _Son of a bitch._  

The armor made getting into the shaft and moving through it a tight squeeze, but Locus had accounted for it in the planning stages of the op and was unconcerned by their slow speed when Felix brought it up. And the shaft wasn't very long. About twenty meters and they were out, in another wide corridor that let them walk side-by-side. Which they did, right up until they turned a corner and ran into an armed patrol. 

Throwing up his shield, Felix blocked the bullets while Locus shot them over his shoulder. Each one found their mark. Felix lowered his own gun, unused, as the guards hit the floor. 

"So now they found us too," he remarked, deactivating the shield and stepping forward to examine the bodies. Two of them weren't carrying anything more interesting than rifles, but one guy seemed outfitted for causing a little more destruction than his buddies. 

"Move," Locus told him as he stepped around him. "We don't have time for souvenirs." 

"Not looking for souvenirs," Felix returned as he straightened up, a pilfered pair of grenades in his hands. He lifted them up so Locus could see them. "Getting some backup." 

One never knew when a grenade would come in handy. That was the first lesson he'd learned on the battlefield during his first deployment. They were loud and messy, but sometimes, blowing a group of Sangheili warriors to hell was the only way to get out of a bad situation. And humans died a fuck of a lot easier than the aliens did. 

He didn't get a nod of approval from Locus for his quick thinking, but he didn't get bitching or complaints either. It was as good as he knew he was going to get, what with not being a buff, blond Freelancer.

They ran into a group of scientists and four more guards on their way to the ballistics lab. Felix went through the scientists like tissue paper. In the interest of conserving bullets—and having more fun—he used his knives, slitting the throats of the nearest targets and burying blades in the eyes and chests of those cowering in the back. In the armor, he was faster, stronger, and more precise than he usually was. It was over in less than a minute. He was cleaning off his knives when the guards found them, but Locus took them out with the same cold precision he'd dispatched the previous contingent. 

"Stop stealing all the kills," Felix told him, disgruntled. 

"Stop fooling around and I won't have to," Locus shot back. 

It was almost like their old combat banter, but they both fell silent before it could really get started. Felix just didn't have it in him to keep after it and Locus had his eyes on their destination. In the corner of his HUD, the timer had ticked down to 12:17. 

"We should be going to the launch bay," Felix grumbled as, after a sixty meter sprint, they entered the ballistics lab. 

It was empty. 

No pain in the ass Freelancer. No prisoners streaming through toward the promise of freedom. Not a fucking thing.

"Where the fuck is he?" Felix demanded to Locus, then opened a channel and repeated it at Wash. "Where the fuck are you?" 

For fifteen seconds, there was nothing but silence coming down the line. Felix knew it was fifteen seconds exactly because he was watching the timer flash through them one after the other. Then, right as he was about to ask again, Wash responded.

"Sorry." His voice was strained and the longer he spoke, the more obvious it became that he was out of breath. "Ran into a snag."

"Where are you?" Locus cut in.

"Above you. We got cut off."

"On our way," Locus said, already moving out of the lab and heading for the stairs.

Felix hurried after him. "We don't have time for this. 

"We need to get those people out," Locus returned, opening the stairwell doors and heading up the stairs two at a time 

_Those people? Or Wash?_ "We need to get _us_ out."

Locus didn't slow down. "We can do this. We've been in tighter spots before." 

That was true. However, Felix would have liked to point out that those tighter spots hadn't involved trying to get a huge group of disorganized people through a minor warzone and onto a transport in eleven minutes. But he didn't. He knew there was no point. This new and not the least bit improved Locus wasn't going to let all those people die to save himself, even though that was the intelligent decision. All he could do was try to keep the fool alive until they either pulled it off or blew up with Alvaro’s melty guns.

They found Wash and about fifteen disheveled stragglers penned in a large office filled with cubicles. A group of eight guards were clustered around the doorway, occasionally firing inside, forcing everyone to keep seeking cover behind the cubicle partitions. With Locus using his camouflage to get behind them, they made short work of the opposition.

_So much for the big bad Freelancer skills_ , Felix thought snidely as he peered into the office. _Guess he isn't so great after all._

Most of the captives came rushing out once the guards were gone and ran down the hallway. Three others exited more slowly, holding Wash between them. There was a spiderweb of cracks across his visor and blood leaking down from his chestplate. He was conscious; he was holding his gun and making an effort to walk on his own, but his footsteps were unsteady and the angle of his head wasn't filling Felix with confidence that he could actually fire the gun with any accuracy.

"What happened?" Locus barked, as he stepped forward to take Wash's weight off of his helpers. 

Wash slumped over against his shoulder. "Got shot. Twice." 

_Pity it didn't kill you._ Felix eyed them both, wanting nothing more than to tell Locus to fucking leave him, but he knew that would fall on deaf ears. Not wanting to watch them for longer than necessary, he checked up and down the hallway, but neither the motion trackers nor the heat sensors located any approaching hostiles. 

"The prisoners?" Locus was asking. 

"I sent them ahead to the transport." 

"Casualties?" 

"Four. Nine injured." 

"Okay," Felix interrupted, gesturing at them to get the fuck moving. "We can cry about it later. Move." 

It would have probably gone faster and easier if he'd helped out with Wash, but Felix refused. If Locus wanted to lug his worthless ass around, that was his prerogative. There was no way in hell Felix was signing off on it. Locus likely knew that, too, because he didn't ask for help or say anything about it. Neither, predictably, did Wash. 

With Locus' hands busy and Wash useless, it was on Felix to clear a path and oh, was he ever looking forward to doing it. But no one got in their way. No one took shots at them. They made it to the launch bay with six minutes and forty-nine seconds left on the timer. It was so easy that Felix was expecting a clusterfuck with the prisoners, but instead of a thousand and some people milling around like morons, there was just one waiting for them. Just one, though luck must have abandoned them, because he looked worried as fuck.

"What is it?" Locus asked as they approached. 

The man, middle-aged, unshaven, and wearing dirty, torn clothes, shook his head. "Ship's scanners picked up a group of about twenty people headed this way." 

That explained where all the opposition they hadn't encountered was. 

"Doesn't matter," Locus replied, moving past him to board the ship. "We'll be gone before they get here."

"Not unless we get the airlock open," the man returned, sounding a little too hopeless to Felix's liking.

"We're pilots," Locus assured him. "We know how to operate ships like this."

"So does Stevens," the man told him, passing a hand over his greying hair. "The system's been disabled. We can't open it. We've tried."

"What do you mean, disabled?" Felix cut in sharply. "We have about five minutes before this place gets blown to hell. We don't have time for this."

The man looked frantically between them, pale face growing paler as that news sunk in. "What are we going to do?"

Some of that panic was catching. Felix could feel it skittering up his spine and he looked around, trying to see the way out. Because there _had_ to be a way out. They hadn't come all this way, through the Great War and fucking _Chorus,_ just to die on some goddamn pointless humanitarian effort.

Always calm under pressure, Locus said evenly, "Remote access may not be possible but there's a control room through that door." He nodded toward the other side of the bay. "The manual release will be there."

"Right, okay." Felix checked the timer. 5:16. "So we go in there, hit the button, and get the fuck out of here. Great. Go get on the ship and we'll—"

"The guards," their personal harbinger of catastrophe interrupted. "They're coming through that way."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Felix hissed, throwing up his hands. "Look—"

The solution came from an unexpected source. "Just leave me," Wash said quietly.

Locus' swift response was entirely predictable. "No."

"Someone has to stay behind," Wash said, more forcefully than he'd said anything since being injured. "I'm already injured. I'll get it open and distract the guards. Go."

"No one gets left behind," Locus told him firmly, voice like steel.

It was a stupid statement. Even Felix could see that. Of course someone needed to be left behind. They were running out of time and the window for getting across the bay, deactivating the airlock, and getting back to the transport before the guards arrived had passed. The window to do it all, fight off the guards, and still escape was rapidly closing. And the longer they argued about it, the more likely they were all going to die down there like assholes.

_Get him the fuck out of here_ , Mason's voice echoed up through the years, through one mistake and fuck up after another. And Locus had. He'd grabbed Felix and dragged him out of that warehouse, leaving Mason behind to deal with those cartel bastards. And it had destroyed them.

It was like a premonition, the way insight swept so keenly through him. Because he knew, standing there watching as Locus argued with Wash, that he wasn't going to make the call. Worse, he wasn't going to let Wash do it either. If he was once again forced to choose between losing his friend or losing his partner, he would choose to stay behind himself this time. And as certainly as Felix understood that, he grasped an even deeper, more fundamental truth.

Regardless of how much time had passed or what had transpired during the course of it, he was not willing to live in a universe without Locus in it. He never had been.

Funny, how it all shook out in the end. There were some things worse than death after all. Worse than the only person he'd ever actually cared about leaving him to die and shacking up with the enemy. _I fucking hate when you make me be the responsible one._

"Go," Felix said, spitting the words out before he could talk himself out of it. "I've got it."

Locus shook his head. "There are too many."

"Yeah. I know." Smiling behind the visor, Felix held up one of the grenades he'd pilfered.

"No."

"Sam..."

"I've seen the schematics. The room's too small. You won't get clear of the blast."

Felix nodded. "I know."

"Get on the transport."

He wondered, as he stood there shaking his head, if he'd felt panic or fear when he'd died on Chorus. He always thought that he would whenever he finally found himself staring down his death, but right now, all he felt was a strange kind of calm acceptance. "No."

"Don't argue with me," Locus growled at him.

"There are too many. You said it yourself. You want to complete the mission? We need to get that airlock open." The timer read 4:16. "And we're out of time."

"There's another way," Locus said stubbornly.

"Not everyone makes it back, Locus."

"You'll die."

_Tell me something I don't fucking know._ Felix shrugged. "And you'll live." And at the end of his life, that was all that really mattered.

"No."

This was wasting too much time. Felix looked at the timer again. 4:05. "I was always going to die for you. I knew that. I think you did too. We weren't survivors. _You_ are."

"You already died once." Locus was arguing about this more than Felix thought he would. It made him feel... He wasn't quite sure how it made him feel. Not happy. But not pissed off either.

"So I've got practice." He didn't feel the levity with which he said it, but no one had to know that. Least of all Locus. "How many people can say that? Go, Sam. Do what you came here to do."

"Isaac—" Locus started, ignoring their audience, but Felix wouldn't let him finish it.

"I'm buying you time." And because they were running out of it, he turned and started off toward the control room. "Don't waste it."

He heard the dull _thunk_ of something heavy hitting the floor, but he didn't think anything of it until something strong caught his arm and yanked him around. It was Locus, his helmet gone. _What the fuck are you doing?_ The thought passed through Felix's mind faster than he could get his mouth open to ask it, and in that time, Locus wrenched his helmet off as well.

The kiss was as brutal and passionate as the ones they'd exchanged in the elevator had been. Locus kissed him like he was drowning and this was the only way he could get any air. Like all the years of antagonism and arguing had been filled with anything but. When Locus pulled back, Felix could read his thoughts in his eyes more clearly than he had ever been able to read them, and knowing what he was going to say, he shook his head.

Snatching his helmet from Locus' hand, Felix took off across the launch bay. He jammed it back on, held it in place until he heard the latches catch, and looked at the timer. 2:43. In the HUD, he could make out the three green dots moving away from him—Locus, Wash, and that stupid prisoner making their way onto the ship—and the thick cluster of red dots moving toward him. 

He crashed through the control room's door, skidded to a stop at the dark instrument panel, and scanned the readout. Stevens, whoever that was, had been right. The system had been disabled. But Locus had been right too. The manual release was right there.

Felix slammed his hand down on it, and thank fuck, the panel lit up. A message flashed across the computer terminal: _airlock opening._ Through the window, he could see the transport's engines firing. Lights lit up across the ship and the propulsion system began to glow a bright blue as it lifted off the ground. On his HUD, the red lights started to flash and the proximity alarm started beeping in his ear.

"You're clear," he said into the comms, not sure if Locus had put the helmet back on. If he hadn't, no big loss. But if he had, well, it was probably comforting to know the ship wasn't about to smash into the airlock door.

He should have known better than to wonder. Locus' voice came back immediately. "Goddamn it, Isaac."

How many times had he heard that in his life? It figured he'd hear it right before he died, too. Smiling, he said quietly, "Go live your life, Sam. The past won't haunt you anymore."

And before he could say anything else and ruin the moment, Felix turned off the comms and watched in silence as the ship rose up through the launch tunnel. As far as deaths went, this one wasn't so bad. He was making a stand. He was going to take a lot of motherfuckers with him. And his partner got to live another day. 

Plus, he'd gotten a pretty nice goodbye out of the deal. A man in his line of work couldn't really ask for more. And maybe, years down the line, when Sam was older and more crotchety than he was now, he'd look back on their lives, on his former partner, and maybe he'd remember him a little better.

Heading over to the other door and elbowing it open, Felix unclipped the grenades. The timer on his HUD ticked down to 0:45 just as the guards rounded the corner in front of him. 

"All right, you sons of bitches." Grinning savagely, he flicked the activation buttons on the grenades. "Let's get this party started."

 The grenades had a five second delay. The bastards never even knew what hit them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note to say that part 4 is going to be at least as long as this one. Maybe even longer. So if it takes me a while to get it posted, that's why!


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, this story was going to have four parts. But the last part got very long and in the interest of keeping it somewhat manageable, I've broken it up. Unless something unforeseen happens, I plan to post part 5 and the epilogue in April.

Blue. Blue as far as the eye could see. Until the eye focused and the blue became an incomprehensible swirl of blue and white, superimposed upon which were little flashes of green and red. Those flashes shifted, red flickering and winking out one by one until all of it was gone and only the steady spot of green remained. It was bewildering and strange, right up until the moment the whole inexplicable mess was eclipsed by a bulbous blob of mottled grey and green.

"What are you doing?" 

Ordinarily, blobs of color were silent. But this one, despite not appearing to have any sort of aperture that might function as a mouth, had somehow spoken. Its voice was low, sort of gravelly, and sounded pretty heavily colored by exasperation. At least, it seemed likely that it was the blob that was doing the talking. There didn't appear to be anything else around capable of doing so. Not unless it had equally unfriendly blobby friends lurking behind it and one of those had posed the question.

Apparently it didn't like waiting for an answer, because after an indeterminate amount of time, it snapped, " _Felix_."

Like a bucket of icy water dumped over the head of a sleeper or a stinging slap to the face, the sound of his name in Locus' sharp, impatient voice galvanized his brain into working order. And once it started processing sensory data properly, things became comprehensible again.

Sort of.

Locus, in full armor, was staring down at him. Turning his head slightly to the side caused the sky to become visible behind Locus' helmet and all the random bursts of color resolved into projections of information that were being thrown up onto his HUD by his armor’s sensors. A second spent assessing his current condition told Felix that he was lying on his back, sprawled out on what he came to realize as he turned his head a little further was rocky dirt.

He was outside. He was lying on the ground. Locus was standing over him, barking questions at him and losing his patience. But Felix was sure, one hundred fucking percent sure, that he was dead. Not just dead, but blown into tiny pieces that had probably been immediately incinerated by the heat of the installation’s explosion.

And yet, he could hear Locus sighing in frustration. He could feel an itch just above his right eye that he couldn't scratch with the helmet on and his chest rising and falling with every breath that he took. His HUD was helpfully displaying his vitals, all of which were relatively normal. His lips were there when he licked them and neither his mouth nor his tongue was dry. And thoughts that a dead man wouldn't have were clearly presenting themselves in his mind.

_What the fuck is going on? Am I dead? Is this supposed to be the afterlife? Is there actually a fucking afterlife? What the fucking hell is this?_

"Your heart-rate is elevating," Locus said after another span of silence, during which Felix stared up at him, mouth opening and closing on all the things he wanted to say but couldn't manage to voice. "Are you injured?"

It was the kind of question that ought to have carried at least a hint of concern, but Locus didn't sound concerned. He sounded indifferent. Maybe a _tiny_ bit irritated, if Felix was being generous in his interpretations.

For once, however, he wasn't trying to be a stubborn pain in the ass. He genuinely had no fucking clue what the hell was going on. Was he injured? He should've been dead and whatever atoms of his body that might have been left should've been buried under tons of concrete, steel, and rock. He shouldn't have been outside lying around in the goddamn _sun_ like he was on some kind of screwed up vacation. Admittedly, he wasn't operating at his best at the moment, but as far as he could figure it, there were only three explanations, all of varying idiocy and impossibility.

The stupidest and most impossible was that there really was some kind of afterlife and this was the start of his. Even as the thought materialized, he dismissed it as crazy bullshit. He'd never believed in religious mumbo-jumbo before and he wasn't going to start now. The marginally less idiotic and impossible was the possibility that he'd somehow survived both the explosion and the installation's collapse and Locus, the asshole, and the freed prisoners had dug him out. And maybe in a movie that would have been plausible, but he couldn't credit that one either. Too much luck would have been required to make that happen and barring _one_ extraordinarily important instance, his luck had always been pretty shitty. Which left the third, and arguably most likely, scenario.

Right now, trapped beneath meters upon meters of oppressively heavy mountain, he was burning to ash and his brain was doing one of those slow-motion episodes that it usually engaged in during particularly heart-stopping situations. Yet instead of playing back through his life and reminding him of all of his fuck ups—too numerous to count; not even the special kind of temporal distortion that human perception was capable of producing could stall time long enough to account for all of those—he was just getting one last fucking lecture from Locus.

He almost laughed. _It would just figure, wouldn't it? All of that and I still can't get out of the goddamn lecture._

Well, he wasn't going to listen to it. Ignoring Locus, Felix shoved himself up into a sitting position and looked around. He wasn't sure what he was expecting: an island of land on a sea of clouds, an unremarkable and utterly forgettable nowhere, a crater on Gilgamesh, an area of slowly dwindling safety as a burning ring of fire closed in. His sense of drama demanded something extravagant, but he wasn't banking on it.

Still, he wasn't expecting to see what he did.

A burning Warthog. Scorched earth. The entrance into some kind of concrete bunker half overgrown with vines. The bullet-ridden bodies, and some charred body parts gently smoldering, of what looked like two dozen or so Chorusan soldiers. Discarded guns.

And resting on the ground a few centimeters from his hand, a dark and dormant teleportation grenade.

_Chorus?_ It probably would have been a loud, half-yelped exclamation, but Felix's throat had frozen and all he could do was uselessly open his mouth. He took another look, casting a wide-eyed, disbelieving stare from Locus to the bunker to the Warthog and on back to Locus, but the sight didn't change. It was still Chorus. When he focused on his HUD and pulled up the planet's atmosphere, it coughed up a series of readouts that he didn't give a shit about except to prove that he wasn't hallucinating.

It was fucking _Chorus_. And it looked like he had never left it.

"What happened?" His throat was dry now, he discovered, as the question came out sounding rougher than he was anticipating.

Where Felix would have punished Locus for not answering his question by refusing to reply with anything useful once the shoe was on the other foot, Locus proved himself the bigger—figuratively as well as literally—man, and the considerably less petty one, by responding as if he hadn't just been trying to get Felix to acknowledge him. "I dispatched the remaining soldiers while you were using the grenade." It wasn't possible to see his expression behind the visor, but Felix could imagine it easily enough just by the dry sound of his voice. "And lying on the ground."

He knew it was meant to be chastisement for making Locus do all the work, but Felix latched onto it immediately as a possible explanation. "How long was I doing that?"

There was the subtlest shift to Locus' posture, so much so that it wouldn't have been noticeable to anyone who wasn't as familiar with him as Felix was. It meant he was starting to realize that something wasn't quite right with what he was seeing, even if he wasn't yet aware of what it was.

"Nearly two minutes," Locus told him. 

Felix hadn't been expecting to hear that he'd spent two weeks lying on the ground in a coma, but being knocked unconscious for an hour and having an elaborate dream would have at least been understandable and unrealistic. But _two minutes_? There was no way that was long enough.

Very distinctly, he could recall the dizzying shock of learning that he'd traveled four years into the future. It had clung to him like a second shadow, casting a pall over everything he'd done in those weeks on Gilgamesh. He hadn't really _accepted_ it, but he had been learning to live with it so that he could function without going completely crazy. Discovering that it had all been some kind of fucked up dream and he'd never actually left Chorus brought that shock and sense of lost equilibrium right back to him.

Because it had felt real in a way that dreams never did. Because he could still remember everything that he'd done, every conversation he'd had with Locus, and even tiny, inconsequential details, like the glistening sheen of sweat he'd caught sight of near Locus' temple as he'd carried him out of the elevator and the tangy smell of something cooking that had come wafting through the kitchen door when he'd gotten too close to it during that fight in the bar. He could still recall the taste of the beer on Locus' tongue as he'd kissed him and the relaxing strength of the water pressure from that stupid shower.

And it had all been a _dream_?

He couldn't believe it. He'd had realistic dreams before, ones that were full of violence, arguments, and that pervasive longing he could usually ignore when he was awake but could never manage to do when he wasn't. None of those had been like whatever Gilgamesh had been. Few of those ever lasted beyond a specific situation and none of them ever spanned more than a single day or night. He'd never dreamed up an entire life for himself, and the few times he'd come close, it had been unrealistic fantasy bullshit. Like a mansion by the beach on some tropical island he'd bought where Locus never wore clothes and always wanted to have sex. It wasn't frustrating or full of uncomfortable emotions he preferred to pretend he didn't have or _Locus fucking Wash after he died._

"What's wrong with you?" Locus' demand broke through Felix's downward spiral into weirdly suffocating confusion, snapping him out of memories of Gilgamesh and hurling him back into the present of miserable old Chorus.

"I'm just..." It was a valiant attempt, but when he realized that Locus would neither believe him nor care, he trailed off into silence and shook his head. He knew that wasn't normal for him and that if he left it like, Locus would pick up on it and ask more questions he couldn't satisfactorily answer, so he snatched the grenade off the ground and tossed it to him. Predictably, Locus caught it like he'd been standing there doing nothing but waiting for it the whole time. "This shit makes me sick to my stomach."

It was the most plausible explanation he could give him. Locus had traveled by teleportation grenade before and it had done a number on his stomach too. He hadn't done anything obvious to express it, like thrown up in his helmet or complained about nausea, but Felix knew him and his mannerisms too well. From the way he'd gingerly walked to the first place he could sit down and then had immediately taken off his helmet to breathe deeply of fresh air, it was clear he hadn’t been feeling particularly well. Hearing that it had done something similar to Felix would give him no cause to investigate further.

And he didn't.

"Get over it," Locus told him shortly, evidently accepting the lie and considering the matter closed. He stowed the grenade onto one of his magnetic clips and turned away, already heading back to the bunker. "We have work to do."

Felix watched him go in unmoving silence, once again feeling the jarringly disorientating disparity between the man he'd just spent— _dreamed_ he'd just spent—days getting reacquainted with and the one he'd apparently never left. It was like taking a steel-toed boot to the gut; breathing seemed harder than it should have been and everything in his chest ached in a strangely dull way.

Time was marching inexorably onward, however, and he knew that if he kept sitting there Locus would eventually get pissed off enough to say something. Then they'd spend the whole flight back to base fighting, and while the prospect of arguing with Locus had never given him pause before, right now, he really didn't want to do it. Just the thought of it left a bad taste in his mouth.

_A week ago—What I_ thought _was a week ago, I wanted nothing more than to come back here. Now that I'm here, I just want to go back. Where I died._ Twice. _How fucked up is that?_ He could feel the itch of laughter in his throat, constricting it, making it difficult not to give in to it. But he fought it off. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop and there would be absolutely no explaining that if Locus caught him doing it.

_It was a dream_ , he reminded himself fiercely. _You woke up. Get the fuck over it and get on with your life. Acting like a jackass over it isn't going to change anything_.

As far as reprimands went, it wasn't the most compelling or inspired, but it put enough distance between him and the shitstorm of emotions he was feeling that he was able to shove it all to the back of his mind. And from there, he could get away with ignoring it.

Pushing himself to his feet, Felix surveyed the area one last time. Dead bodies. Burning debris. Blackened dirt and broken rocks. No movement save for Locus reaching the bunker and disappearing from view as he passed through the doorway. The coast was clear and it was time to get back to work. Stupid as they all were, the Chorusans and the morons weren't going to kill themselves.

_Least now I'll get to kill those fucks myself,_ Felix thought as he stooped to pick up the firearms he'd dropped in the aftermath of the teleportation. Once they were reattached to their proper holsters, he trudged after Locus. _That's a pretty good consolation prize._

* * *

Despite how simple it should've been for two people of Locus and Felix's caliber, it was emphatically _not_ easy to kill any of them. The Reds and Blues, along with their obnoxious as fuck Freelancer buddies, were too deeply entrenched in Armonia to make picking them off easy. The cannon fodder passing themselves off as soldiers had a tendency to wander off from the safety of the city and into stray bullets, but the piss-poor leadership of the unified Chorus army remained inside with the sims, which meant that unless they got more men, they weren't going to be able to take them out. Not without using a nuke, an idea with which Felix was totally on board and Locus kept rejecting.

They found the solution to the problem rather unexpectedly one evening, during a pitched battle of sarcasm and barbed comments over whose fault it was that they were in such a mess in the first place. Locus, firmly barricaded behind the belief that the blame lay with Felix spouting off the plan to Tucker, lobbed a challenge into no man's land that he ought to go out and schmooze his way into acquiring an army, since apparently the only thing he could be counted on to do was run his mouth. Felix retaliated with the sharp retort that he had more skills than that and if Locus needed a reminder, he'd just head on out and steal one. A ceasefire got called shortly after that, as they realized that that was something they _could_ do.

A few strategically staged strikes later, they had their army and the UNSC's correctional program was out a large number of involuntary participants.

And that should have been that. They had the numbers. They had the superior weaponry. They had the leadership and the tactical minds. Locus and Felix, at least, had the training, and after exposure to the losers that made up both parts of the Chorus army, they were both willing to bet on a group of murderers and violent delinquents over people who still weren't confident in their ability to fire a gun. It was practically a done deal.

Except it wasn't.

It started to go south when one of their guys dug up Aiden Price. The manipulative fuck was bad news from the start, Felix could sense it the second that he opened his mouth, and it only got worse. Because as soon as he mentioned Agent Washington, Locus took an interest in the counselor that he hadn't had and Felix, standing right there, couldn't help but notice. Theoretically, it could have been because Price claimed to have inside information on what made the Freelancers tick and could presumably tell them how to beat them in a fight. With anyone else, that would have been it. Felix, already happily coming down on the side of killing the guy and being done with it, felt his interest piqued precisely because of that offered knowledge. But he knew his partner. Plus, he had functioning eyes, ears, and a brain. It took Price dangling Wash in front of Locus for him to take the bait.

Then there was the guy with the stupidest fucking name in the history of picking codenames. Sharkface. He might've been a cool guy. He was violent, he was vicious, he was bloodthirsty, and he wanted to kill Freelancers. They were the best qualities Felix could ask for in someone he was forced to associate with for an extended period of time and maybe, in other circumstances, he might have looked upon him as a temporary, and wholly expendable, friend. But Sharkface's inclusion in their inner circle upset the balance Felix had been carefully maintaining ever since Locus had decided Unfeeling Robot was a good look for himself. Locus started treating him like a _partner_ , giving his opinion credence and listening to him when he ought to have been listening only to Felix.

It didn't sit well with Felix _at all_. He wouldn't share a pizza with someone. He sure as fuck wasn't willing to share Locus with anyone. Ordinarily, he would have dealt with such a threat the most expedient way possible: he would have killed the bastard and dumped his body in the nearest ditch. Yet that wasn't an opinion. He had to let him remain a part of the group, let him hang around Locus, whispering his bullshit in his ear, until he could arrange for Sharkface and the Freelancers to kill each other.

Price and Sharkface constantly talking to Locus about his new favorite subject was bad enough. Day by day, Felix could feel his tenuous grip on his possessive, territorial tendencies getting looser as the itch to kill them both got stronger and stronger until it was a constantly burning, urgent distraction. And then Hargrove, colossal prick that he was, had to up the ante even further and offer Locus _Agent Maine's fucking armor._

Sure, it was cool armor. And yeah, if it performed as promised, it would make killing people so incredibly easy that they would never need another person to join their operations, regardless of how complex those jobs turned out to be. _But it was Maine's fucking armor_. The last goddamn thing Locus and his infuriating obsession needed was to start wearing Wash's—the information provided by the Freelancer files didn't specifically state _what_ they were to each other, but it was pretty damn clear that there was a hell of a lot more to their relationship than terms like _teammates_ or _fuckbuddies_ could cover— _whatever's_ stuff. That fact was never more apparent than when Felix's flat reminder that Maine hadn't been _Maine_ for a long time did little to dampen Locus' near reverent enthusiasm for the suit.

Time Felix should have spent hunting down targets or coordinating with the degenerates under his command went to stalking Locus and keeping an eye on Sharkface and Price. Mental resources he ought to have invested in planning strategies for taking out their enemies went into making sure that he was always in place with a convenient reason to interrupt the conversations either of the assholes was having with Locus without arousing the suspicion that he was doing it on purpose. It was exhausting, all consuming work.

And just when Felix thought that it couldn't get worse, a motherfucking portal to hell opened up in the middle of the overgrown temple in the jungle.

Not going into it wasn't an option. Not when Locus was dreaming about being a true warrior and what that might mean to his quest to sweep the fucking Freelancer off his feet. Felix had to go through. If mystic vision quest bullshit was what it took to convince Locus that _he_ was the only person he needed, then he was damn well going to go on that quest and come out the other side as the perfect warrior. Then Locus would want him again and he would stop chasing after Wash.

So in he fucking went.

_He's hurrying down a hallway made of something that looks like concrete. Red lights are flashing and there's an alarm blaring so loud that not even the helmet's dampening systems can shut it out. His HUD's full of so much information he can barely see through it. There's a timer counting down in the corner; he keeps looking at it and it's taking everything he has not to flat out run. But he can't. There are two dots behind him, moving too slow to keep up if he goes any faster._

_There's a gun in his hand. It isn't full anymore but the ammunition counter shows that there are enough bullets left inside that he doesn't need to reload it yet._

_A large doorway comes into view. Beyond it, a transport sits in the middle of a hangar. There's a man standing there, nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot and looking like he's seconds away from wringing his hands. He's a disheveled, dirty mess. He needs a shower, a change of clothes, and a shave._

_Felix knows him. He's seen him before, in a distant dream he's almost completely forgotten about. And just like that, he remembers why all of this seems so familiar. He's_ been here _before._

_Gilgamesh. He's back on Gilgamesh. He's gone through the portal and ended up back in the future._

_This is where he dies. He remembers that too. Because the dirty man is saying that the airlock won't open and there are guards coming this way. Not many, but enough to stall them until the explosives they've set detonate the entire facility and kill them all. He remembers this. He knows what's coming with a chilling sort of inevitability. Their options are dwindling and the only one that's going to be left is one that he can't stomach._

_Which means that he'll do it again. Even knowing now how it all ends, he'll make the decision no one else can. He'll stay behind because it will mean that Locus gets to live. And maybe that means that he'll start a life with Wash and they'll live happily ever fucking after the way that_ they _never would have managed, but Locus will_ live _and that's more important to Felix than who he's fucking while he does it._

_"I'll stay," Wash says, just like Felix knows he will._

_And Locus shakes his head, just like Felix knows he will, and says, "No. Felix will stay."_

_"Wait, what?" Felix blurts out, certain that he's hearing him wrong. It wouldn't be impossible. The alarms are very loud._

_Locus' expression is hidden by his helmet, but as he turns to regard him, Felix gets the impression of a cold, impersonal stare as strongly as if he was looking straight at it. "You're staying. We're leaving."_

_He still can't fathom it._ That isn't how it goes! _"But that's—"_

_Instead of letting him finish the argument, Locus points his gun at him. "Go disable the airlock. Now."_

_He's frozen in place, so stiff and motionless that the armor may as well be in lockdown. "You aren't going to shoot me." He should be saying it because it's a stupid as fuck threat. He can't release the lock if he's dead. But it isn't logic or reason that causes him to make the assertion. It's his inability to fathom Locus turning on him like this._

_"Oh, come on," Wash says, mocking laughter in his voice. "You didn't seriously think we needed you on this op, did you? Why else would we bring you along?"_

_The timer's counting down and the prisoner is yammering at them to get moving, but Felix ignores him. He has his gun in his hand and he aims it at Wash's big fat head. Because this time, he's going to shoot the motherfucker and Locus will finally be free of his influence._

_It's the impact of the bullet as much as it's the armor's security system lighting up his HUD that alerts him to the fact that Locus has just fucking_ shot him _. The armor's composite plating protects him from being injured by such a low caliber round, but it still feels like a direct hit. There's no blood. His shoulder's fine. The armor isn't even dented. But when he looks down, he's surprised not to see himself bleeding out all over the floor._

_"Get moving," Locus tells him. "The next one won't be a warning."_

_"Killing me won't get the damn airlock open," Felix snaps back, the words coming out of his mouth like he's on autopilot._

_Locus just shrugs. "I'd rather be dead than stuck with you for the rest of my life."_

_"But we'd really rather_ you _be dead," Wash chimes in, standing a little straighter and more steadily than those two gunshots would lead one to believe he could. "So how about you get going?"_

_He looks at Locus, too dumbfounded to move. "Locus—"_

_It's too late. He's already turning away and the two of them are walking, Locus' arm curved securely around Wash's waist and Wash's arm thrown across Locus' shoulders, to the transport. Felix watches them go as the seconds tick away, each one flashing across the HUD in time with the rapid beat of his heart._

_Betrayed. Cast off. Left to die._

_And Locus doesn't look back._

A flash of light deposited him on the other side of the portal, almost directly into the center of a semi-circle of curious pirates. They spoke as one, tossing questions his way, but he was too busy spinning around to stare at the portal, heart racing, trying to readjust, _again_ , to the fact that he was on Chorus. Not Gilgamesh. That it was all just another fucked up dream. Locus hadn't killed him. He hadn't ditched him for Wash.

It took Locus appearing next to him for it to feel real. Though for one heart-stopping instant, as Locus leveled his gun at him in a fashion eerily similar to what had just happened, it felt a little _too_ real. And that made Felix, already grossly unbalanced, even more acerbic and unproductive than usual. He wouldn't tell Locus what he'd seen in the portal, though after enough prompting and Locus' refusal to lower the goddamn gun, Felix finally threw him a bone.

"I saw shit straight out of my nightmares," he told him gravely, then swiftly changed the subject so they could stop talking about it.

But he didn't stop thinking about it.

No longer pushed to the back of his mind and effectively forgotten, the stupid dream started haunting him. It invaded his thoughts during his waking hours, dredging up flashes of images, snippets of conversation, and scents of things that weren't there. Occasionally Locus would have to irritably repeat himself because Felix was so distracted by memories of his imaginary counterpart that he wasn't paying attention. Every time it happened, every time Locus snapped at him or made a snide comment, that damn portal-generated vision reared its unwanted head, reminding Felix that it was only a matter of time before Locus got fed up with him.

At night, his dreams were a frustrating mixture of that nightmarish version of Gilgamesh and the more idyllic one, where he wasn't abandoned in favor of Wash. The latter were few and far between, with the nightmares coming more frequently and getting more horrific with each iteration. After a week of it, he stopped sleeping entirely.

It was better to be manic and sleep-deprived than to keep seeing Locus kill him over and over in new and varied ways.

He thought it would get better once he got the Key from Doyle. It was a victory in a war that shouldn't have had as many defeats as it did. It was a mark of _his_ prowess. It was proof that he was just as good as any of the Freelancers. And then, of fucking course, the fucking thing didn't work.

Felix _knew_ that Locus blamed him for it. Him and Price and Sharkface. They were judging him. Finding him wanting. _Unstable_ , he'd heard Price say once, before he barged into the room and disrupted further conversation. _Reckless_ , Sharkface had muttered when he thought Felix wasn't anywhere in the vicinity to hear him. _A liability_ , he knew Locus was thinking, though he never heard the condemnation pass through his lips. But he knew his partner and he knew what was going through his mind. It was maddening, it was beyond his ability to tolerate, yet he consoled himself with a singular, rather elegant solution to the whole disaster.

The Purge was going to be his salvation.

When he'd first heard Sharkface mention it, Felix had felt a bizarrely overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Had anyone asked, he would have sworn up and down that the reason for his certainty was that Locus had told him about it already. Except Locus had acted as clueless as everyone else about the thing and when Felix had tried to remember _when_ he'd told him about it, he couldn't place the memory. If he’d worked at it a bit more, he might have gotten it, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter. What mattered was getting the Key, activating the Purge, wiping everybody off the face of the planet, and finally getting the fuck off of the miserable rock once and for all.

When Doyle was killed and the energy sword crackled to brilliantly glowing plasma life in his hand, Felix was _sure_ they were going to win. Forgetting that his helmet obscured his expression, he turned to Locus with a huge, genuine smile, only to find his attention elsewhere. Again. The way it always seemed to be anymore. That the recipient this time was the still novel reality of the alien AI didn't do anything to assuage his irritation. In fact, when Locus started to argue against using the Purge, Felix felt his temper boil over.

Not using the Purge wasn't an option. Not doing everything they could to put Chorus so far behind them that they couldn't even see its star from the window of their ship wasn't a remote possibility. It was happening. With some quick thinking and a ready counter to every disagreement Locus and the AI offered, Felix won the argument. His steps were light, buoyed by the impending death of every idiot who'd dared to get in his way, as he and Locus boarded the Falcon they were taking to the weapon site. But not even something as simple as shoving an energy sword turned mythical alien magic Key into whatever passed for an equally mythical alien magic Lock turned out to be easily done.

Because Carolina and motherfucking Agent Washington were there. _But this time,_ Felix assured himself, _they're going to die. They're both going to fucking die._

Had the situation been anything other than it was and his deteriorating importance in Locus' life not been on the line, Felix would have enjoyed the fight. Usually, he faced incompetent morons or people that thought that going through Basic meant they were badasses and tore through them so fast it was like they weren't there at all. Going up against Freelancers, however retarded they were otherwise, actually challenged him. Maybe not fully—at no point was he ever concerned that he might not survive the encounter—but enough so that it felt like a real workout. It should have been fun. It probably would have been, were it not for Locus and Wash duking it out and rolling around on the weird-ass temple platforms like all of their sexual tension had at last reached critical mass and erupted in the only way it could.

It was extremely distracting. He spent more time trying to keep an eye on them than watching what he was doing, which he paid for with a series of near misses and stupid mistakes that once or twice almost got them both killed. But it was really fucking hard to keep a clear head when he caught a glimpse of Wash kicking a knife into Locus' shoulder and his vision went as red as the blood that splattered across the front of his partner's chestplate. He thought, in those few seconds before rage drowned out everything else, that that was as pissed off as he was going to get.

And it was. Right up until those pieces of shit dropped a fucking _starship_ on them.

* * *

The time display on his HUD insisted that he'd only been unconscious for a minute and a half, but as Felix struggled to shed the dazed fog that had descended over his mind, he wasn't convinced that he wasn't hallucinating. It seemed like much longer. The rest of the readout was flashing a multitude of warnings at him. Decreased oxygen in the environment. Rising air temperatures. The hazardous pressure of half a ton of metal and rock piled up on top of him. Unstable vitals being transmitted from the nearest ally synced with his armor's sensors.

Watching the fluctuation of Locus' heartbeat spike across the bottom left corner of his HUD burned off the daze faster than time or his own threatened mortality could have done and not getting an answer to his acknowledgement request gave Felix the motivation he needed to shove and claw his way up out of the rubble. Once he'd gotten clear of the worst of it, he immediately set to shifting the debris to either side in an effort to keep it from caving in on him again. It was tricky work, made more complicated by trying to avoid stepping on Locus' unmoving body where it lay sprawled at his feet, and he was rapidly approaching exhaustion.

The armor could augment his strength and speed, but it couldn't prevent extended exertion from wearing him out. Fighting the pointless battle with the Freelancers had depleted most of his energy. Holding off an enormous explosion and a rain of burning pieces of starship and alien temple had sapped the rest of it. Less than two minutes of inactivity hadn't done anything to recharge it. And unfortunately for his aching muscles, taking a break wasn't an option. If Locus had been awake and blaming everything on him, it could have been. But with him unresponsive like he was, Felix had to hope adrenaline and rage could carry him through it.

Somehow, it did. He got Locus fully unearthed, checked him for visible injuries and, finding nothing beyond minor superficial damage to the armor, dragged him to the Falcon. Which, he noted with relief so strong that he almost collapsed, had been parked far enough away from the explosion that it was still operable.

"Wake up," Felix told Locus firmly, as he wrestled him into one of the helicopter's seats.

Much like when he tried talking to Locus about any other subject, however, he received no response.

The impulse to slap him had Felix lifting his hand before he realized he was doing it, but he caught himself prior to going through with the motion. Locus was injured. As satisfying as knocking him awake might have been—as satisfying as it could have been to strike armor instead of his face directly—he wouldn't know the true extent of his injuries until he woke the fuck up and communicated what hurt. And Felix hadn't gone through the trouble of holding off an explosion and the plummeting wreckage of a ship _and_ a building with nothing more than a shield to protect him from a fiery, crushing death just to accidentally kill him with a poorly thought out slap. No matter how much he wanted to do it.

He couldn't shake him, either. The best he could do was snarl through clenched teeth, "Goddamn it, wake up."

Locus didn't respond. Didn't even twitch. Felix stepped back, eyeing both him and the seat's restraints.

There was no way in hell he was going to be able to buckle him into it. Wearing the armor, he was too much dead weight and the longer Felix fucked around with him, the smaller the possibility for successfully completing the mission would become. He was getting too tired, Locus was injured, and the sims were gaining too much time. And they couldn't win. They just couldn't. Before, it had been about the job. It had been professional pride that drove him to kill them when it would have been easier to say fuck it and move on. But now, _now_ it was personal.

Now, Felix was going to kill them not just for the money or the stupid high-tech armor or the opportunity to prove once and for all that he was better than them. Now, he was going to kill them because of what they'd done. For threatening what was his, for trying to take Locus away from him, for driving that knife through his shoulder and trying to crush them both with the _Tartarus_.

He was going to make them pay for it all. And when he was done with them, there wouldn't be anything left.

Turning away from the cabin, Felix shut the door, jiggled the handle to make sure it was latched, and hurried to the cockpit. _Maybe my flying will wake him up_ , he thought with morbid humor as he settled into the seat and fired up the controls. The engine sputtered for a worrying length of time and the readout for the instrument panel kept dissolving into static, but eventually the Falcon lifted off the ground.

Sixty meters up, the propulsion system crapped out and sent the craft plummeting down toward the planet for a few panic-stricken seconds. It came back online before it crashed and Felix twisted on the throttle and yanked up so hard on the collective pitch that he thought it might snap off in his hand.

"This is a motherfucking disaster," he hissed under his breath, blinking sweat out of his eyes as he watched the numbers on the altimeter start to rise.

"What did you do?"

Any relief Felix might have felt at hearing Locus' low, albeit pained and halting, voice through the comms evaporated at the question. Like it was _his_ fucking fault any of this had happened!

"Seriously?" he snapped back. The cyclic pitch shuddered in his hand like the Falcon was fighting wind shear. A few seconds later, a warning light started blinking on the dashboard. _Oh for fuck's sake._ The left rotor was on fire. "You're blaming _me_ for this?"

Locus didn't respond. Felix wasn't sure if that meant that he'd passed out again or if he was refusing to dignify the obvious with an actual answer.

"You're such a fucking asshole," he muttered under his breath, not caring whether Locus could hear him or not.

Apparently he could. "What happened?"

"Before or after they dropped the _Tartarus_ on us?" Felix retorted, though he was too distracted with trying to reroute power away from the damaged rotor to give it much bite. "I dug us out. Got us back to the Falcon." _Don't you say a fucking word about my piloting skills._ "Headed after them."

There was a long pause. Then, unhelpfully, Locus asked slowly, "What...?"

The inquiry could've been in reference to anything. Felix didn't have the time, patience, or attention needed to suss it out. "They went to the temple," he reminded him shortly. "We're going after them."

It couldn't have been any more succinct or cut and dried than that. Figuring that the conversation was over, Felix stopped listening for more stupid-ass question and started going over the plan of attack with himself. It probably shouldn't have been necessary, but in the heat of the moment, he knew that he tended to get a little too... _enthusiastic_ and sometimes—almost always—got carried away. _Get to the temple. Kill the sims. A bullet apiece ought to do it. Except for Tucker. That stupid son of a bitch deserves to lose his head. Cut off Tucker's head. Find the Freelancers. Kill Carolina. Smash the AI's chip. And_ then, _very slowly dismember—_

"No."

Not only did it interrupt what was turning into a very pleasant daydream of mutilating Wash into an unrecognizable smear on the ground, it also sounded like Locus was trying to interfere with what was his fully justified retaliation. "The hell I—" Belatedly, he realized that he hadn't said any of it out loud, meaning that Locus had to be referring to what he'd actually voiced.

Of course, that meant it wasn't any less idiotic an opposition.

"They dropped a fucking _starship_ on us!" Felix reminded him. "They almost _killed_ you! I'm going to—"

"No," Locus cut him off, his voice harder and firmer than it had been since he'd regained consciousness. "I don't want to—" He interrupted himself with a deep breath. "I don't want to do this anymore."

That didn't compute. "What?" Felix asked blankly.

"This isn't right." Locus' breathing sounded labored and the undercurrent of pain hadn't disappeared. It hadn't gotten worse, but it wasn't getting any better, either. But he kept talking, like his inability to breathe easily and his injuries were all just a minor inconvenience. "This isn't us. I want..." He trailed off again, probably to refill his lungs.

To Felix, it felt a little like Locus had just sucked the air out of his own. "You want to let them go," he finished for him, his voice as hollow as his chest.

"Yes."

" _No_ ," Felix instantly snarled back.

"We can leave," Locus insisted. Not begged. There was no note of pleading in his slightly breathless voice. No change or urgency in his dry tone. It could have been any of the multiple times over the years that Felix had wanted to torch something for the hell of it and Locus had firmly and dispassionately put the kibosh on the idea. "Money isn't worth this."

"I don't care about the fucking money," Felix shot back, nearly snarling. "I care about—"

The memory hit him like a punch to the gut.

_Standing in the middle of a room that wasn't his own, facing off against Locus as a seething mass of conflicting emotions churned inside him. Hating him and wanting him just as strongly as ever, trying to ignore the way the dim lighting caused shadows to get trapped in the curves of his muscles and itching to sweep a knife off the table and drive it into his flesh. And the whole while, Locus continued speaking, oblivious to the effect he was having on his audience._

_There was really no time where talking about Wash in any capacity that wasn't planning for the disposal of his body was acceptable, but after sex definitely wasn't it. Furthermore, it was making trying to empathize—a critical skill Felix had difficulty with in general even on the best of days—with Locus' lame-ass excuses for why he thought it was perfectly acceptable to let a bunch of incompetent sim troopers kill his partner impossible._

_For instance, that asinine insistence that he had_ missed _him in some way. Felix tore his gaze away from a strange discoloration on the front of Locus' left shoulder, wishing the shirt wasn't in the way so that he could see if it was actually a scar he wasn't familiar with or a trick of the light, to roll his eyes and make a sarcastic quip._

_Instead of suitably chastising him, it caused Locus to get up off the bed and stalk over to him. He didn't yell, of course he didn't, but he was very emphatic when he claimed it was somehow all_ Felix's _fault he'd left him to die. "I wanted to leave but you—You kept chasing after them. You brought it on yourself.”_

The way his brain immediately ceased the unexpected trip down memory lane and replayed that last bit only needed a fucking digital glitch to be more clichéd. _"I wanted to leave but you—You kept chasing after them."_

Had he been talking about _this?_ Felix had never pressed for explicit details, not wanting to hear a gruesome play by play of how he'd died. Because it hadn't mattered. It was over and done with and there was no going back from the future. _But it was a fucking dream_ , he reminded himself. _A dream. It wasn't a vision of the goddamn future._

Except now, regardless of what it actually was, he wished he would have asked more about it. They'd only spoken of it a few times and during all of them, they'd been arguing, so it wasn't like he could glean a wealth of information from any of the other memories he could've tried dredging up. It felt so stupid, frantically searching through his mind for something that hadn't happened, but he did it anyway, unable to ignore the rising sense of urgency flooding like adrenaline through his body.

The first he'd heard of any of it had been overhearing Locus on phone with Wash. In the...whatever it was, Felix had actively tried to forget the whole episode so he wouldn't obsess over it too much. But now... _Damn it, what did he say? Something about me and Chorus._ It was like a word caught on the tip of his tongue. He was so fucking close to capturing it.

_Locus' voice alternating between defensive and a weirdly resigned kind of placation. Assuring Wash that Felix didn't know what had happened to him. He was fine. Not adversely affected by his partner's unexpected appearance in his life again._ And there it was. _"He remembers some of what happened on Chorus, but not all of it. He comes from a time when we had not yet discovered the Purge."_

It sent chills down Felix's spine. The Purge. He hadn't heard about the thing until _after_ he'd had the future dream. It couldn't have been his subconscious filling in unimaginative names for shit he'd never seen because he hadn't known anything like that existed in the first place. But it was real. The Purge was real, or had been before the Freelancers had destroyed it.

And Locus had mentioned _that_ too. Now that he was actively thinking about it, Felix could dimly recall Locus telling him about the Purge in relation to Alvaro’s prototype weapon, mentioning something about how they’d learned of it at some point prior to Felix’s death but had never used it because it had been destroyed. And in the real world, _this_ world, _it had just been destroyed._

The chills were getting stronger. His heart was beating faster. _It couldn't have been real. It couldn't. I'm not a fucking psychic. I couldn't fucking know about any of this._ But the more he remembered of his dream-vision, the more it seemed like he had.

_"I was tired of killing," Locus told him after he'd barged into the office and heard the truth straight from the asshole's mouth. "I wanted to quit. You would not. And you would not listen to me."_

Felix shook his head. _It can't be. It can't fucking be real._ Because if it was real, he was going to die when they caught up with the sims. Locus was going to be so pissed off at him or whatever the bullshit reason was that he was going to stand there and let the sims kill him. Because if it was real, after he was dead, Locus was going to hook up with Wash and celebrate his demise with sex and they would keep on having sex together right into happily ever after. Because if it was real, a past version of Felix was going to show up and ruin the honeymoon, only to die _again_ for the bastard and then they really would fly off into the goddamn sunset.

_Over my dead body_ , Felix thought grimly. _And that isn't going to be today, you motherfuckers._

He had no idea how much time had passed between when he'd stopped talking and now, but apparently it had been too long for Locus. "Felix?"

It wasn't an easy thing, to consciously make the decision _not_ to pursue people that he hated more than he hated practically anyone else. Instinct told him not to be a fucking idiot by trusting in something that hadn't even happened. Pride told him that he better not pussy out because the only way to keep Locus was by proving that he was stronger and more fit for survival than his precious pet Freelancer. Fear whispered that the dream was right and that if he didn't quit now, he was going to lose his life and Locus in one fell swoop.

Felix didn't want to listen to fear. He'd spent over two decades of his life combating it, ignoring it, and defying the possibility that it had any hold over him. Giving in now felt like defeat. _But if it was real, if all that shit's really going to happen, then it isn't fear. It's fucking common sense_.

Involuntarily, his fingers clenched around the cyclic. "Where do you want to go?" Felix asked Locus tightly.

Locus didn't ask about the silence or the abrupt change of tone. "Doesn't matter. Anywhere but here."

_Just do it. He's asking to go. He isn't going to think you're a coward if you do what he's asking you to do._ Or would he? Was it a test? A sort of What Would Wash Do test that Felix was going to fail if he gave in?

"You sure about that?" Dragging it out wasn't helping, but Felix couldn't force himself to change direction until he was absolutely sure that Locus wasn't trying to trick him into fucking up. "You just want to pack it in, give up the mission, piss off Hargrove, let the assholes live, and leave Chorus?"

There was no hesitation. "Yes."

Closing his eyes while flying a busted helicopter was probably a really stupid thing to do, but it wouldn't be the stupidest thing he'd ever done and even if it was, he didn't care. Felix closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and made himself say it.

"Fine." It was going to go down as the most disappointing day in the history of his life, and the decision he was most disappointed in himself for making, but Felix jerked the cyclic sideways and the helicopter banked sharply off-course. Both levers were vibrating in his hands and the instrument panel was lighting up like a supernova at the rough treatment to its damaged systems. He ignored it. "We'll go."

He wasn't expecting a _thank you_ and he didn't get one. He didn't get anything in response. A quick glance at the biometric readings coming from Locus' armor showed that he hadn't lapsed into unconsciousness after he'd gotten his way. _Whatever,_ he told himself. _It doesn't matter_.

What mattered now was finding a place to land the piece of junk before the engine gave out or the rotors melted off and they crashed. Then they were going to need a new ship. There were a few smaller ones still back at the base. If they could make it there, they could sneak in, grab one, and be gone before any of their cannon fodder noticed their leaders were abandoning the mission and the planet. And if that happened, well, whatever Locus' opinion on killing was, Felix's hadn't changed.

And quite frankly, after the way the day had gone, he was looking forward to the chance to work through some of his more tumultuous emotions.

* * *

The Falcon made it back to the base without crashing. They found a ship capable of extended space flight without needing to kill anyone to get it, much to Felix's tremendous disappointment. He even managed to get Locus off the Falcon and onto the cargo ship without incident, further injury, or a brief lapse into unconsciousness. Everything was working out suspiciously well, leading Felix to believe the craft would explode on takeoff or some other misfortune would befall them. After the disaster at the Purge, and every other fucking thing that had happened since they'd gone there, it seemed too easy for anything to go their way.

He was still eyeing the control panel warily as they broke orbit and began to move away from Chorus, unable to believe they were really getting away without yet another stupid setback. It wasn't until the ship entered slipspace en route to Venezia—the first place he could think of that wasn't tightly controlled by the UNSC _and_ wasn't Gilgamesh—that he finally stopped waiting for something catastrophically bad to happen. Paranoia told him not to let his guard down even then, but the reality of Locus' injuries forced him to shove it away.

Setting the navigational controls to autopilot until the ship left slipspace and required a human hand to guide it to its destination, Felix turned away from the controls and made his way over to Locus. He was still sitting where Felix had left him, slumped back in an empty chair at the rear of the bridge. His helmet was still fastened securely to his armor, obscuring his face from view.

"Hey." Felix nudged his leg with the tip of his boot. "You still alive in there?"

Despite his injuries, Locus somehow found it within himself to sigh in irritation. "You know I am."

"Then get up and let's go take care of your injuries."

Locus didn't move. "I'm fine."

"Uh huh," Felix replied sarcastically, planting his hands on his hips. "Sure you are. This is just—It's the new you. The lazy pacifist who doesn't do anything but sit around and watch those soap operas I can't understand."

It was the most insulting comparison he could make with his mind racing in a dozen different directions and an emotional hurricane raging behind a hastily constructed wall of stubborn avoidance that he kept trying to shore up with random tasks. Locus was the opposite of lazy, driven and work-oriented to the point where Felix often suspected that he might have some kind of unfathomable vendetta with relaxation. Trying to imagine him sitting in some comfortable, overstuffed arm chair watching pointless fictional dramas and getting caught up in an impossibly beautiful woman's struggle to escape poverty by convincing a wealthy man to leave his current bombshell girlfriend and marry her instead through a series of melodramatic misadventures and scandals or whatever the hell all that bullshit in a foreign language was about was laughably ridiculous. So much so that he hoped it would galvanize Locus into action and save him the trouble of trying to be persuasive.

"Someone has to fly the ship," Locus replied with frustrating blandness.

"I set it to alert us before it leaves slipspace," he volleyed back.

Locus still didn't move. He didn't offer a counterargument to that, either. He just sat there, unmoving, like if he pretended he wasn't actually there inside the armor, Felix would give up and go away. _Goddamn it, I hate you so much sometimes. I don't know why you always have to be such a miserable bastard all the time._

Felix stared at him in silence for a few seconds, trying to will him into being cooperative. It didn't work. "Look, I know you're fucked up, all right? I saw that son of a bitch stab you." He didn't mean to snarl that last bit, but just mentioning it caused the fury to spike and once it found an outlet to freedom, he couldn't quite rein it back under control. "And then you got crushed under a fucking starship. So stop pretending you're fucking fine _and let me help you._ "

For nearly half a minute, nothing happened. Locus didn't so much as twitch and he didn't say anything, but Felix had the distinct impression that he was looking at him now. Seeing him. Perhaps for the first time in quite a while.

_Wash isn't here,_ Felix thought fiercely, glaring at the inscrutable visor in front of him like willpower alone could jam every unspoken word into Locus' thick fucking skull. _He isn't going to be. So you're stuck with me. You're just going to have to deal with it. Or get your hands dirty and kill me yourself._

Spontaneously developing telepathy and understanding the message that was being transmitted in his direction wasn't in the cards for Locus, but Felix assumed that he could probably feel the intensity of his stare and could at least guess at the furious sentiment behind it. He'd certainly employed a similar strategy against _him_ often enough in the past. And if divining disapproval and frustration through flat stares and silence was outside the realm of Locus' abilities, then he had no reason to believe that Felix could do it either.

Evidently it wasn't, because after a moment, Locus murmured, "No biofoam."

It was likely meant to be a peace offering, that tiny nod to all the agonizingly uncomfortable experiences they'd both had with the stuff, but the memory it provoked made Felix burst into laughter. Wild laughter that took on a slightly hysterical edge the longer it went on.

After a lengthy moment, Locus asked warily, "Felix?"

Gasping for breath, Felix shook his head. There was no explaining it in any way that Locus would understand. And with his emotions still an unstable, chaotic mess, it was possible even trying would send him into another fit of hilarity. He had to grit his teeth against the laughter to get it to stop, and even then, tiny huffs of smothered amusement escaped when he exhaled.

Knowing that Locus was going to ask again, Felix grabbed his arm and hauled him out of the chair. Either he wasn't expecting it or his reaction time had been affected by his injuries, because for a few long seconds, he didn't make any attempt to help. Good thing, really; by the time Locus started participating in his forward momentum, the effort Felix was expending to get him moving had burned through the energy that had prompted the laughter and he felt like he was on a slightly more even keel than he had been.

They went straight to the cabin closest to the bridge. Felix ducked out to go hunt down a medkit, leaving Locus with stern instructions to stay put. He was half expecting to find the room empty when he returned, but surprisingly, Locus was still where he'd left him. He'd taken his helmet off by himself in the interim and was sitting on the bed with his eyes closed, obviously resting. Felix paused in the doorway, taking advantage of Locus' inattention to look him over.

There was dried blood on his sweat-streaked face, the source of which appeared to be a shallow cut up near his hairline. He looked worn out and there was a tightness to the set of his mouth that spoke of discomfort and pain, but his skin wasn't pale from excessive blood loss. And thank fuck for that, because the ship wasn't a medical transport with an abundance of equipment and supplies. If Locus had needed a transfusion, he would have been shit out of luck.

"Found a medkit," Felix announced, holding up the case and rattling its contents. "Got some biofoam too, since you asked so nicely."

One of Locus' eyes cracked open. "Thanks," he said dryly.

"What can I say? I'm a thoughtful guy." False cheer was easier to maintain than trying to have an honest conversation about any of it. Felix sauntered into the room, deposited the case and the container of biofoam on the bed beside Locus and started shucking off his armor. "Can you get out of the rest of that yourself or do you need a hand?"

Predictably, Locus started to argue with him. "That isn't—"

"The undersuit's punctured," Felix cut him off matter-of-factly. Locus appreciated a no-nonsense approach to problems? Well, he was going get it in spades now. "If we get a hull breach, it isn't going to do you any good anyway."

And except for the two of them, the ship was empty. There was no reasonable excuse for Locus to keep catering to his paranoia. They were alone. They were a week out from encountering anything that passed for civilization. He had injuries that needed treatment. They could do it the easy way or the hard way, but whatever Locus chose, the armor was coming off.

Felix arched an eyebrow at him. "You going to cooperate or am I going to have to punch you out first? Because that's just going to make more work for me and I'm tired as fuck already."

Locus glowered at him. "I'm not an invalid."

"So stop acting like it."

He sighed. "Felix—"

It wasn't fair—and considering that he didn't know if the whole Gilgamesh thing had actually happened or not, it might not even be remotely accurate either—but Felix had never played fair in his life. He wasn't about to start now.

"You want to find your way back to yourself, Sam?" He barreled on, ignoring Locus' subtle flinch. Whether it was at hearing his name spoken aloud for the first time in years, the question being too perceptive and hitting home a little too hard, or both, Felix had no way of knowing. "First step's taking the fucking armor off and admitting you're not a goddamn robot."

The likelihood of it being his withering stare that caused Locus to shut his mouth instead of the blunt words was slim to nil, but Felix was willing to suspend his disbelief and pretend that he had finally succeeded in intimidating him. They stared at each other for another minute or two, Locus not moving and Felix casually dropping pieces of his own armor to the side like it wasn't making an obnoxiously loud _clang_ every time one of them hit the floor. Finally, after Felix had stripped down to the undersuit, Locus broke his silence.

"My mobility isn't a hundred percent," he offered softly.

_Oh no. You're not getting away with that._ He knew damn well what he meant. He knew it was Locus' backhanded way of asking for assistance without saying the words. But Felix wasn't having it. "And in people language, that means what?"

Locus scowled at him. Felix blithely stared back at him and lifted both eyebrows. _You aren't winning this one, asshole._

He must have recognized it for the losing battle that it was, because he heaved a heavy, long-suffering sigh. "I need your assistance."

It was tempting not to let it go. Felix wanted to needle him. Like a specter whispering in his ear, he could hear Locus' voice—maybe a dream, maybe an actual version of the man from the future—saying _"I wanted his help"_ and if he could so easily ask _Wash_ for help, Locus could damn well ask him too. _Try again_ , he wanted to demand. _The people term is help. Fucking use it._ But something inexplicable kept the words unspoken.

Instead, what came out of his mouth was an even, "Where else are you injured?"

"I think some of my ribs might be broken." With his right hand, he indicated the leg he'd been favoring during their slow walk to the cabin. "Not sure about my leg."

Felix gave him a critical look. "Just the one?"

Expecting another pointless argument, he was surprised when Locus blew out a breath and turned his hand sideways in a gesture of uncertainty. It was less obstinance that he hadn't specified both having sustained injury then, and more that he hadn't had an accurate answer. Felix supposed that he could live with that.

"All right. Well..." Pursing his lips in thought, he glanced over Locus' body, inspecting the armor for any obvious damage that might prevent removing it. A casual once-over didn't reveal anything, but that didn't mean that he wouldn't find anything once he got his hands on it. "Just stay still and let me know if anything hurts."

A low grunt was all Locus offered as an affirmative.

It wasn't nearly enough. Felix fixed him with a flat stare. "I mean it. If you try pulling the same shit you pulled on me in Sedra, I'm kicking your sorry ass straight out the airlock."

Just mentioning it was enough to piss him off all over again about the whole debacle. A relatively leisurely trip to the planet had led to an unexpected job that had found them, six hours after accepting it, racing through the city of the same name with a cartel's entire legion of enforcers on their trail. In and of itself, that wouldn't have been such a bad thing. It could have actually been a _fun_ thing. But Locus had somehow forgotten to mention that he'd gotten shot at the start of the pursuit and it wasn't until they had broken into a convenience store for a breather nearly an hour and a half later that there had been enough light for Felix to see the suspicious stain mostly hidden beneath the dark jacket he'd been wearing.

Locus had insisted that he was fine the whole way through the impromptu field surgery to which Felix had then forcibly subjected him in order to remove the bullet. He kept insisting he'd been fine even after it was over and he was leaning heavily against the counter, sweaty and pale and sipping from a purloined bottle of water. Not being a gullible dumbass, Felix had known differently. If it hadn't been for the needle, thread, basic medical supplies, and some cheap painkillers the store had carried, Locus might not have survived the night.

For six months after the incident, he had taken great pains to remind Locus at every opportunity that he'd been a colossally stupid fuck for playing at being a Spartan and almost dying because of it. Locus had never expressed an appropriate level of guilt over the sorry mess, but he also hadn't continued pretending to be invincible when he wasn't. 

Apparently the lesson hadn't been lost in his foray into emotionless robot territory, because Locus had the decency to quirk the corner of his mouth into the tiniest of faint grimaces. "I'll tell you."

Luckily for Locus, it never became necessary to test him on that assertion. Despite the beating it had gotten, the armor came off easily. Only the chestplate gave Felix pause, but Locus correctly interpreted the reason for his brief hesitation and assured him that the knife had hit him clean and well away from the metal. Soon after, that too joined the rest in a disorganized heap on the floor. It was a mess made worse by Felix kicking pieces out of the way whenever he had to move around Locus' legs to get to hard to reach releases, but he didn't care. The shit was meant to withstand bullets and plasma rounds, it would survive a boot. And he pointedly ignored Locus sighing when a hunk of metal went clattering across the floor.

"Consider it motivation to get better," Felix told him the next time it happened, with an offhand nod toward the thigh guard rattling its way under a chair. As anal as Locus was about treating his equipment properly and keeping his space neat and tidy, it might actually work, too.

"We've had worse injuries than this," Locus reminded him mildly.

Felix snorted in dismissal. "That's beside the point."

With a quick tug, the boot disconnected. Felix slid it off Locus' foot without jostling his leg _too_ much and discarded it to the side. Done, he sat back on his heels and surveyed the fruits of his labor. Locus was free of the armor with minimal fuss, but getting him out of the suit was another matter entirely.

He looked up at Locus' face in a bid to gauge his feelings about their options and found Locus staring down at him with an expression Felix couldn't easily define. It seemed a little like curiosity and a little like confusion, but a lot like something else entirely. It was weird. Felix didn't like it.

"Are you gonna be able to get this off the old fashioned way or should I just cut you out of it?"

The distraction worked like a charm. Slight exasperation pushed whatever the fuck the other thing was off Locus' face. "I would prefer not to cause further damage."

Rolling his eyes, Felix got to his feet. "Take the fun out of everything, why don't you?"

Removing the suit was not fun, but Locus handled the unpleasant experience like a real trooper. He didn't grunt and groan his way through it, he didn't complain when he had to bend his leg at an awkward angle or when the material needed to be pried away from the wound on his shoulder. He set his jaw and did what needed to be done to get the thing off of him, which made him a hell of a better patient than Felix ever would have been.

"Are there suitable changes of clothes?" Locus asked once he was sitting back on the bed in his underwear and the suit was on the floor.

In the middle of worming his way out of his own, Felix took a second to gesture expansively at the room and the small pile of medical supplies near Locus' hip. The absence of a freshly laundered and pressed three-piece suit was clear. "Next time we're trying to steal a ship, I'll be sure to check the closets first," he told him sarcastically.

Locus sighed. "I meant—"

"I know what you meant." Kicking the suit off, Felix padded over to the bed on bare feet and started going through the medical supplies. "I'll go look for shit _after_ you stop bleeding all over the goddamn place."

That was an exaggeration. His shoulder _was_ still bleeding, but by that point it was more of a sluggish trickle than anything else. Darker trails of dried blood streaked his upper arm and most of the left side of his chest, evidence that while it wasn't quite as bad as it had been, it was still a deep wound and needed better treatment than slapping a piece of gauze on it and calling it a day. Which, Felix knew, was exactly the kind of thing Locus would do since he wouldn't be able to stitch it up himself.

"You want sutures or burning agony?" he asked before Locus could respond, holding up the canister of biofoam in one hand and a packet of synthetic thread in another.

"How steady are your hands?" was not the answer he was expecting to get to that.

"What kind of stupid fucking—"

"You said you were tired," Locus cut in reasonably. "If you need to rest, use the foam now and the sutures after you've done so."

It could've been practicality. Locus had plenty of scars already and was in pain, whether he wanted to admit it like a normal person or not. Sitting through a ham-fisted, shitty stitching job and coming out with another big mess for his trouble would suck. But it could've been a subtle jab at Felix, too. A question of his competence, maybe, or a backhanded way of calling him weak and pathetic. That it might be Locus attempting to be considerate never crossed his mind. _This_ Locus didn't give a damn about trivial bullshit like someone else's comfort.

"It's stitches," Felix retorted with mild reproach, unable to translate the offer's actual meaning and giving up on it. "Not dismantling a live Tac-Nuke."

Locus studied him a moment, then tipped his head back. "Go ahead."

What field training in the UNSC hadn't taught them about basic first aid, the life they lived in the years that followed certainly had. Felix couldn't _honestly_ claim to be a professional at stitching wounds, though he absolutely would boast that he was to someone he was conning, but he was pretty good at it. And he had deft, steady fingers that allowed him to do it quickly and neatly. Locus barely flinched through the whole procedure, though he suspected it had more to do with Locus being Locus than any credit to him personally.

As he was tying off the last suture, Locus asked, "Where are we going?"

"Venezia." Shrugging, Felix tossed the needle into the medkit and dug out a little container of wet wipes. "Figured we could resupply there. Maybe trade this ship in for a Corvette. Or a Prowler."

Not that the cargo ship was useless. It had the basics where food, supplies, and equipment were involved and it had a Shaw-Fujikawa engine, but it was sorely lacking in the armament department. They needed firepower. Personal firearms for themselves. Armaments for the ship, maybe MAC guns if he was going to dream big. Better food. More sophisticated tools. A Corvette would have all of that. A Prowler, if they were lucky enough to locate one, would have that _and_ a cloaking device.

Even if Locus really was going to go through some stupid savior of the universe metamorphosis, they were still going to need guns. Good intentions wouldn't protect either of them. In fact, all of that bullshit would just paint a target on them and make them look like easy pickings. And without Locus' mysterious benefactor gifting them with experimental tech every time they turned around, it was up to Felix, as the only sane one left in the outfit, to handle it.

"Too populated," Locus disagreed, proving that no matter how deeply entrenched into do-gooder territory he got, he would always be a colossal pain in the ass.

" _Too_ populated?" Felix exclaimed, pausing in the middle of trying to clean the blood off of Locus' shoulder to pull back and stare at him. _Too populated_ wasn't an accusation that could legitimately be made about any of the galaxy's human colonies anymore. "You want to hit up a graveworld, sure. There are plenty of them between us and Venezia. But we aren't going to be able to get supplies, much less a functioning ship, from any of them."

Locus gave him one of those constipated _how fucking stupid are you?_ looks that he'd practically turned into an artform. "I only meant that we should go somewhere more discreet until we know what happens on Chorus."

Felix wrinkled his nose at that. "Who fucking cares? I thought you wanted to be done with that." He would never turn down the opportunity to gut the sims, but if Locus changed his mind now, after all the bullshit, Felix was going to be pissed off.

"It won't be over if Hargrove pursues us."

"He's not going to pursue us," Felix said before he had the chance to consider the words that were coming out of his mouth. "If the UNSC doesn't execute him for treason and crimes against humanity, he'll spend the rest of his life in jail."

"We should still be prepared to—"

"Look," Felix waved the wet wipe to cut him off. "Normally, I'd agree with you. Hell, being prepared is why I want to get a difference ship in the first place. But Hargrove isn't going to be an issue. Much as I hate to say it, the sims'll take care of him."

Locus was staring at him again, the expression on his face balancing on the border of indefinable and something that might have been bewildered on an ordinary person. Felix wasn't familiar enough with Locus experiencing bewilderment to be sure that was what it was. All he knew for sure was that he didn't like the look of this one any more than he'd liked whatever it was he'd glimpsed when he'd still been crouching on the floor.

Frowning in Locus' general direction, Felix turned his attention back to getting as much of the blood off of him as he could. The quick swipes of the cloth grew lighter and more careful around the edges of the wound. It was going to scar, no doubt about that. But he'd done an acceptable job with the stitches. It was going to be noticeable, but it wouldn't be an ugly mass of discoloration and uneven flesh the way it probably would have been if Locus had tried to tend to it himself.

Something uncomfortable itched at his instincts and prickled his skin. He felt the gooseflesh break out across his body as acutely as he would have if an icy blast of wind had just cut through the room. A sideways glance revealed that it was so pronounced that the hair on his arm was standing up.

" _Felix._ "

His eyes snapped up to Locus' face and too late, he realized that he'd just been standing there, the cloth resting a finger's width from the edge of the wound. Locus had been speaking. He hadn't heard a word of it.

"What's wrong with you?" It wasn't _quite_ a demand.

Neither the tone of his voice nor the way he was looking at him was the same as it had been on Chorus, after he'd woken up from the incident—whatever the fuck it had actually been—with the teleportation grenade. But it reminded him of it just the same. He hadn't had an answer then and he didn't have one now. Felix could barely credit the possibility that it had been real, that it had happened to him. There was no way in hell Locus would believe him even if he tried to explain it.

"A starship fell on my fucking head," he retorted, trying his damnedest to load it with sarcasm and pretending it didn't fall a few meters short of appropriately mocking. "I probably have a concussion."

The way Locus was looking at him got stranger. Felix could feel himself bristling under the weight of it. He opened his mouth, ready to say something acerbic so they could move the fuck on, but Locus beat him to it. "Don't sleep," was his mild, wholly unexpected advice.

Under his breath, Felix grumbled, "Not planning on it."

Claustrophobia wasn't normally an issue for him. If he wasn't afraid of legitimate dangers, he wasn't about to ever let himself be weak enough to fear imaginary bullshit. But as he stood there, fussing with Locus' shoulder, it felt like the walls were closing in on him and all the air was being sucked out of the room. He couldn't breathe right. Every inhale brought in a lungful of air, but his chest just got tighter and tighter and the longer he stood there, the more it felt like he needed to get the fuck out of there or he was going to scream.

Finally, he couldn't stand it anymore.

"Here," he said, handing the cloth to Locus _just_ gently enough that he couldn't be accused of throwing it at him. "You can finish the rest."

Locus was giving him that look again. It made his skin crawl and scraped across instincts that felt like raw, open wounds.

"Are—"

"Do you need anything else?" Felix cut in before Locus could finish the question. He didn't want to hear it, and although it probably wasn't a second inquiry into what was wrong with him, if it was, he wasn't sure he'd be able to listen to it without freaking out. "Clothes, right? I'll go find some."

Without waiting for a response, Felix turned and hurried out of the room. The air didn't get easier to breathe the further away from Locus he got and the stranglehold his chest had on his lungs didn't relent. Instead, the irrational desire to run away got stronger. Which was stupid as hell and wasn't going to accomplish a goddamn thing on a starship. There wasn't anywhere to go. Even if there had been, it wasn't like he could outrun what had happened.

_Get your shit together_ , he told himself firmly as he rummaged through the first crew quarters he came upon. _You're acting like a fucking idiot. And if you don't knock it off, he's going to keep badgering you about it until you tell him. What are you gonna say, then, huh?_

He didn't have an answer for himself and he didn't turn up any Locus-appropriate clothes either, though he found a set that fit his own body well enough. It took another twenty-five minutes, searching through seven more quarters, and fighting with the finicky doors of the lift before he found a shirt and a pair of pants that would weren't too big or laughably too small. Much to Felix's chagrin, Locus was still awake when he stopped by his room to drop them off. Not wanting to get caught in another awkward conversation, he rolled up the clothes into a ball and tossed them in to him, then beat a hasty retreat while Locus was still catching them. 

* * *

They fell into a bizarre game of cat and mouse after that. Felix spent all of his time on the bridge, pretending to care about flying the ship, or poking around the kitchen in the hope that something better than the available options would magically materialize if he just opened the cabinet _one more time_. Locus _should_ have been resting and recuperating far away from everywhere Felix chose to be, but at least once every twenty-four cycle, he wandered in unexpectedly and tried to start a conversation. Knowing where it was headed, Felix always shot it down, made an excuse to vacate the area, or hustled Locus back to his room with a steady stream of nonsense that prevented him from getting a word in. He knew that Locus knew what he was doing. He wasn't trying to be subtle about it. But instead of calling him on it and demanding an explanation for his behavior, Locus let it go.

When Felix dropped a change of clothes off at his room and ducked out without a word as soon as Locus said his name, Locus let it go. When Locus ran into him in the hallway and Felix loudly talked over him, demanding he go back to bed and get the weight off his leg before he fucked it up, until he gave up trying to say anything and allowed himself to be herded back to his room, he let it go. When Felix responded to a quiet _we need to talk_ with a snort and an agreement that yes, they did need to talk about Locus' crush on blond Freelancers, Locus shut up in a hurry and let it go.

But Felix knew that it was only a matter of time before Locus stopped being lenient with his avoidance. As soon as he was feeling better physically, and once he had reached a comfortable level of confidence that Felix was hiding something and not just being a general nuisance for the hell of it, he was going to push for a real answer. And Felix knew that he needed to have something better than an accidental jaunt into the future prepared for when it happened. The problem was, he didn't have anything better. He barely had that.

It wasn't the fantastical aspect of the time travel that he had a problem with. He'd grown up with spaceships and colony worlds, hyperspeed travel through man-made time-space fissures, the constant threat of extinction from a conglomeration of alien species, and supersoldiers as humanity's last best line of defense. _Fiction_ had ceased being fictional a long fucking time ago. Time travel, he could handle. Eventually.

What he didn't know how to deal with was what he'd learned in the future. Because if it _was_ the future for real, than everything _else_ was real too. Locus' parade of betrayals. His own death. His continuing willingness to die for a man who he knew couldn't stop stabbing him in the back. And that other thing. The thing that he had refused to think about it when he'd been staring it—quite literally—in the face and absolutely fucking refused to think about now when he couldn't see proof of it anymore.

_That_ couldn't be real. And if _that_ wasn't real, none of the rest of it was either. Everything was just... He didn't know. Coincidence, probably. More of that scientific mumbo-jumbo about perception and the way the human brain translated it. Dumb fucking luck, maybe. It wasn't _real._

It just wasn't.

Being trapped on a starship with only Locus for company when he was doing his damnedest to avoid said company made it difficult for Felix to distract himself. There weren't any people to kill, nothing to steal, no one to talk to, and nothing to drink. He couldn't occupy his mind gambling or scheming or bothering Locus and he couldn't drown it in alcohol for the duration of the trip. All he could do was keep busy. Or failing that, pretend to be busy until he convinced himself that he actually was.

He was on the bridge perusing the starchart displays—unnecessary busywork when the ship's computer was handling all of the slipspace calculations and Felix knew as much about how to do an emergency dispersal of reconciliation debt as he did the most romantic way to propose to a Sangheili aristocrat—when he heard the ominous sound of footsteps closing in on the console. In the vain hope that he could ignore the problem away, he kept staring at the readout. Locus, rotten bastard that he was, didn't take the hint and came closer, calling his bluff.

And for two minutes and precisely thirteen seconds—without turning his head, Felix watched the numbers tick up on the time display in the corner of the nearest projection—neither one of them moved or spoke. Felix remained hunched over the console, the nape of his neck prickling in warning, like his body was bracing itself for a knife to slide in between his ribs. And Locus stood right behind him, practically breathing down his neck, looming like an inexorably building storm cloud that was about to pour down rain all over his marginally nice day.

Locus, rather aptly, broke first. "Felix."

There was nothing in his voice to hint at what was coming next, though Felix could imagine half a dozen scenarios that he _knew_ he was going to hate. "What?" he tossed back over his shoulder, refusing to turn around.

"What's our ETA?"

It wasn't what he was expecting and it was disturbingly benign. _Trap_ , his instincts warned him. _It's a trap! Get out while you still can!_ Unfortunately, getting out meant either climbing over the console or turning around and coming nose to nose with the last person he wanted to see right now.

"Three days until we leave slipspace," he replied, rolling his shoulders in a gesture that was very much a shrug and not an attempt to shake out the tension. "Unless there's some kind of fuck-up with the coordinates and we end up going through one of those temporal distortion whatever science words fields."

Felix had never once in his life claimed to be a quantum physicist or an engineering expert who specialized in Shaw-Fujikawa technology, but Locus gave such a heavy, disapproving sigh at the inexact answer that it gusted over the back of his neck. "That isn't how it works."

_Of course you're a goddamn astrophysicist too._ It was such classic insufferable Locus that the irritation spurred Felix into spinning around to glare at him. "Since you're the expert then, you can fix it if it fucks up."

Locus looked like he was going to sigh again, but instead, he pressed his lips together and gave him one of those _why are you like this_ looks of uncomfortable constipation. Felix wasn't in the mood for it and scowled at him.

"You want to back up a little?" he snapped, redirecting a shove that might have agitated the healing stab wound away from Locus' shoulder and into his stomach. "You're breathing all my goddamn air."

When Locus didn't obligingly back up, Felix started to reevaluate his decision to be considerate of his injuries. He just stood there like a rock, staring at him with an indecipherable expression. "What's going on with you?"

_Here we go._ "What's going on with _you?_ " Felix shot back, inching forward to fill the minuscule space between them so that he could really get into Locus' face. If he kept him on the defensive, there was a chance that he’d be able to postpone this conversation for a little while longer. It wasn’t going to last if he was successful, but anything was better than nothing. "Why do you keep badgering me? This is what you wanted, right? Leave Chorus. Let your precious Freelancer and his sims live stupidly ever after instead of killing them like we should’ve done. Why the fuck isn’t any of that good enough for you?”

It didn't make Locus back up at all and it didn't put him on the defensive the way he was hoping it would, but it did derail him for a moment. "What are you talking about?"

And a moment was all Felix needed. "You and your stupid obsession with Wash!"

During the last few months, he had discovered that the quickest way to make Locus shut down a conversation was to bring up Wash. At the time, as insult after insult piled up and made him want to scream, Locus' refusal to give him a straight answer about it was infuriating. Now, he was banking on it pissing him off enough to make him leave the bridge.

He didn't. His face screwed up in an awkward expression that looked like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be annoyed, confused, or exasperated, so it was trying for all of them at once. "What?"

_Oh, sure._ Now _you want to talk about it._ Grinding his teeth, Felix briefly debated whether he wanted to just punch Locus in the face and shove past him. It was tempting. _Very_ tempting. But there was a slight chance that if he punched him once, he would punch him again. And again. And possibly a fourth or fifth time. As cathartic as that would be, Felix knew it wouldn't solve anything. It was Wash's face he wanted to break, not Locus', and he knew that if he misdirected his fury, it would end up being one more issue between them on top of the mountain they already had. 

"Wash," Felix sneered, loading months of jealousy and bitterness into that single word. "You know. Tall. Blond. Discount supersoldier." Unable to help himself, he added, hurling it at Locus like a knife, " _David._ "

Locus was staring at him like he'd lost his mind. "What?"

The plan, haphazard and unformed as it had been, was rapidly unraveling. If Locus had just done as Felix had expected and left, he would have been able to keep his cool. But standing there playing dumb, after everything that they'd been through recently, was too much for Felix to stand. And the future, whether it was real or a fanciful figment of his imagination, was too far away to temper his ire or curb his mouth.

"Did you fuck Wash?" he demanded, all but snarling in Locus' face.

"What?" Locus came precariously close to gaping at him, but Felix was too irritated at hearing that word _again_ that he missed the momentous occasion. "No." And then, instead of shutting his mouth, he kept talking. "When would I have had the time?"

An appeal to logic and reason might have worked in any other circumstance, but it was absolutely the wrong tack to take in this one. Felix bristled. "Gee, I don't know. Maybe when you ran off to that outpost with him? You had _weeks_ to remember how your dick worked while I was stuck with Tucker and the rest of those fucking idiots."

If he'd just hauled off and slapped him, he probably wouldn't have been able to score the same sort of speechless, stunned look that was currently plastered all over Locus' face. After a few fraught seconds, he opened his mouth, but Felix was faster and jabbed him sharply in the chest with his finger.

"If you say _what_ again, so help me, I will stab you in the throat."

The way Locus paused ever so slightly and licked his lips told him that that was exactly what he'd been about to say. With a low growl, Felix poked him a second time, hard enough to earn him a soft grunt. _I mean it_ , he thought, glaring murder into Locus' eyes. _Say it one more fucking time in that stupid, clueless voice and I swear, it'll be the last thing you ever say._

He didn't say it out loud. He was sure of that. But the intensity of his glare must have communicated the sentiment, because Locus did not say it again. He held Felix's gaze and said, very carefully, "No. I barely spoke with him, much less..." He appeared to stumble over the words then, which would have been a hell of a lot more convincing if he'd been the naive virgin they both knew damn well that he wasn't. "...had any intimate contact with him."

"Did you want to?" Felix pressed, unwilling to let him wriggle his way free of the conversation with semantics.

For an instant, it looked like he was going to say something else. Then, likely remembering the last time he ventured more than a single word, he said firmly, "No."

_Oh no. You're not getting out of it that easily._ "Why not?"

Rolling his eyes in exasperation, Locus shot back, "Why would I?"

"Answering a question with a question isn't an answer," Felix hissed. "It's evasion."

He could see Locus' temper fraying. Unlike so many of the multitude of other times he'd watched it happen, this particular instance seemed to move at glacial speed. If it had been a rope, he thought he probably could have seen the exact second each thread snapped. Once upon a time, those explosions were as fascinating as they were thrilling, but like so much of their lives, they had become a part of a bygone era to which there was no return.

An era Felix had caught glimpses of during that maybe-future. Tiny hints here and there that had suggested that maybe all was not as lost as he'd assumed. _if_ it was real. And that was a pretty fucking huge _if_.

"What are you talking about?" Locus asked, sounding like he was forcing each word out through clenched teeth.

Felix's eyes narrowed to tiny slits of livid fury. "Would you just answer a question for once in your fucking life?"

Locus squinted at him, and just for a second, Felix thought he might actually get a real answer. Probably not an answer that he _liked_ , those were few and far between where Locus was concerned, but at least something other than more questions, bullshit, or bullshit questions. What he got, delivered in the even tones that meant Locus was either curious, oblivious, or trying to make a point, was worse than anything he could have imagined.

"Were you having sex with Kimball?"

Theoretically, he knew what that sentence meant. Individually, he understood the meaning of every word in it. The breakdown in communication came when he tallied the whole thing up and tried to apply it in the real world. Kimball had probably had sex with someone at some point in her life and more than likely, if she really did survive the clusterfuck with Hargrove like the maybe-future indicated that she would, she was probably going to have more sex before she died. But trying to imagine himself being the one having sex with her was like trying to imagine having sex with Tucker; even if they'd been the last people in the universe, Felix would have rather shot himself in the head than stick his dick anywhere near any of that.

Although Locus could be a colossal moron when he really put his mind to being a dumbass, he had to have known that. _Why the fuck would I fuck her when I have you?_ Felix wanted to shout at him. _Are you really that fucking stupid? What the hell is wrong with you?_ Thinking it, however, was vastly different than saying it out loud where Locus could hear him. With things the way things were between them, only one of those options was possible.

"I'm not the one on trial here," Felix retorted, punctuating it with another finger-jarring jab. " _You_ are. And no, you motherfucking asshole. I wasn't."

Wherever he'd been going with that bullshit got sidelined in favor of a bewildered, "Why am I on trial in the first place?"

"Because I know what you did!"

"Nothing?" Locus hazarded, starting to look as confused as he sounded.

"In the future!"

"What?"

The only thing that saved him from the aforementioned threat of a knifing was Felix's realization that he'd just blurted out the _one thing_ he had been trying to avoid during the whole debacle. Scowling, he snapped his mouth shut and shouldered Locus out of the way. As soon as the path was clear, he stormed away from the console without any real destination in mind. _Away_ was as defined as the impulse got.

Away from being trapped between the console and Locus' body. Away from a subject he didn't know how to talk about without sounding like a lunatic. Away from conflicting thoughts, obnoxious feelings, and a slew of memories that were an unhelpful mixture of reality, fantasy, and impossible to determine.

"Just answer the goddamn question," he muttered, once he got a few meters' worth of breathing room.

He glanced back at Locus just in time to see him throw up his hands in visible frustration. "I don't even know what I'm supposed to be answering anymore."

It would have been so fucking cathartic to strangle the son of a bitch. "Wash!" Felix shouted at him.

Locus gave him one of those assessing stares he hated. "Why are you so preoccupied with him?"

"Me?" It came out of his mouth on a choked little laugh before twisting into a shriek. " _Me?!_ Why are _you?!_ " Only the distance Felix had just finished putting between them kept Locus from being hit; by the time he completed the lunge, Locus would have seen it coming and been able to block it. " _You're_ the one composing love letters to him and obsessing over him every fucking second of the day!"

He had the gall to look offended. "I never—"

"I heard those log entries!" Felix yelled over him, not about to listen to him try to lie his way out of it.

Locus sighed. It was one of those deep, weight of the world sighs that usually meant he was giving up on an impossible task. "We're going to have to talk about privacy, aren't we?"

" _Really_?" There was so much venom in that single word that it almost made Felix's throat hurt.

A normal person probably would have done something more expressive at that point. Felix, caught in a lie and frustrated with himself for not being able to get out of it, would have been pacing or otherwise moving to burn off some of the excess energy. Locus just leaned back against the console and braced his palms against the edge. No defensive crossed arms over his chest, no hunched shoulders, no flushed skin. He didn't exactly look comfortable, because he never looked comfortable in the middle of a conversation about anything that wasn't a mission or tactics, but he wasn't exhibiting the demeanor of a man who'd just been found out.

_Or maybe he just doesn't care_ , Felix thought bitterly. _Maybe it takes four years and a walk on the boring side for him to realize what he's lost_. If that was case, Locus was shit out of luck. He wasn't going to conveniently disappear for a few years or give him a Get Out Of Wash's Ass Free card.

"I wasn't—The Freelancers were weapons," Locus began haltingly, as he worked through which words to put to feelings he probably wasn't thrilled to acknowledge that he was having in the first place. "Agent Washington was like me. And he changed. I wanted..."

It took every iota of Felix's self-control not to groan in annoyed impatience. This excuse was becoming as tired and played out as the constantly playing dumb and oblivious shtick. He waved his hand in a _hurry the fuck up_ gesture. "Him to tell you how to reconcile all the shit about who you'd been and who you are now, because he did it and you can't figure it out. Yeah. I got that part already. Skip to the end."

Surprise crashed the emotionless party Locus' face was hosting. "How...?"

"Was that really all you wanted?" Felix pressed. "Just his help? No dicks were involved in your dream makeover?"

"Why is that so hard for you to believe?"

"Uh, because you fucked him. So that sort of negates all of this bullshit about how you didn't want to do that."

" _No_ , I didn't." It was beginning to look like the empty span of metal floor was now protecting Felix from getting punched. "Would you listen to me? You keep asking questions but you aren't listening when I answer you."

On the one hand, using the _I'm not responsible for my future self's actions_ argument was a clever move. But he wasn't trying to sell that shit to a gullible idiot. He was trying to sell it to Felix and there was no way in hell that Felix was going to buy it. "In the future. Same difference. It was still you."

"Where are you?"

It was such a bizarre question that Felix stared at him. "What?"

"In this future you keep referencing." Felix started to open his mouth, but Locus didn't give him the chance to say anything. "Where are you?"

Accusing Locus of being a backstabbing piece of shit was one thing. Explaining the details about how he had come to this unhappy revelation was another. Why Locus couldn't just fess up about what he'd done and answer his questions without demanding reasons for them, Felix didn't know.

"It doesn't matter," he replied dismissively, turning away from Locus and heading toward one of the chairs near the navigational console.

"Yes, it does."

Anger burned hot and fast through him. "Dead," Felix snapped, spinning around to face him. "I'm fucking dead because you abandoned me for him." _And you only seem to think that matters after the goddamn fact._

"No," Locus said simply, giving a tiny shake of his head.

"Uh, yes. I ought to know. I was there."

"I thought you were dead."

_Oh for fuck's sake._ Mentally kicking himself for losing control of the argument and ending up precisely where he hadn't wanted to go, Felix dredged up a denial. "That's not—"

Locus didn't raise his voice to talk over him. He simply said, quietly, "Isaac."

Felix's mouth snapped shut so fast that he pinched the top of his tongue between his teeth. The Locus of the maybe-future hadn't shied away from using his real name, but the last time he'd heard _this_ Locus—real, frustratingly devoid of emotions Locus—do it was years ago. Only slightly more recent than the last time they'd had sex.

"What?" he muttered warily, inexplicably tense.

The path to the chair had taken Felix further away from the center display console and Locus hadn't moved to reclaim any of that space. He didn't do it now, either. But he watched him, grey-green eyes locked on Felix like he was the only thing in the universe. It was the kind of focused attention Felix always craved, though at the moment, instead of quieting all of his riotous thoughts, it made him feel uncomfortably exposed. Like he'd been stripped of his weapons and shoved out in front of an advancing army with nothing at hand and a pair of broken legs.

_Stop staring at me._ Locus kept staring at him. _Look the fuck away if he won't._ And Felix, knowing he could escape whatever Locus was trying to convey by glancing in any direction that wasn't straight ahead, didn't do it. He didn't know why and his body was apparently in the midst of a rebellion, because it flat out refused to acknowledge any of his demands to blink or turn his head.

After what felt like a century, Locus said quietly, "I wouldn't do that."

Felix bared his teeth like a cornered animal. "Yes, you did."

Instead of shouting at him or crossing the bridge to grab him and shake something he could understand out of him, Locus merely watched him and asked curiously, without a trace of his ever-present irritability, "Why do you keep saying that?"

_Because I was there. Because you told me._ Even if he wanted to be honest with him—and he did; some part of him really wanted to unload this burden onto Locus so that he wasn't the only one struggling with it, unable to talk about any of the shit he'd witnessed and slowly going crazy in his self-inflicted silence—there was nothing he could say that would make it believable. The whole thing was insane. Felix wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't lived it. He wasn't even sure that he _did_ believe it. And he didn't have the grenade that had sent him to the future, although considering it had been a random one pilfered from a dead guard that had brought him back to his time, he doubted that it would have been real proof of anything.

If Locus had told him something important, some big secret that he'd never told him and Felix would have no way of knowing on his own, then _maybe_ he could have made the attempt. But what he knew was either irrelevant or useless until enough time passed for it to come true. He couldn't parade out knowing the name of some asshole at a bar on Gilgamesh four years from now and have Locus accept the story.

_How the fuck did I travel to the future and not learn a goddamn thing? Lottery numbers, celebrity scandals, government secrets, fucking anything!_ The best he had was... _Alvaro? Can I use that?_ He didn't know the identity of Locus' informant or the details of how Alvaro found the gun, but he knew where some of the facilities were. If they traveled to Gilgamesh, he could show Locus those. And maybe if he put out feelers to some of the known ONI spooks, he could corroborate the Alvaro intel to such an extent that Locus would be satisfied.

_Or he'll discount it. Say the facilities don't prove anything. Claim I probably saw hints of Alvaro's activities online or something. He'll just assume Alvaro got sloppy and I stumbled on the information looking for an easier mark._ That was the problem with someone who was so anal-retentive about attention to detail that he was probably in a class by himself. In Locus' mind, the only person who wasn't sloppy enough to leave clues behind was Locus. Which was all well and good for them when they were working, but it didn't help now. Felix knew every shady and illegal thing Locus had ever done, largely because he'd been with him during all of it.

Solo ops were few and far between, and even then, it wasn't like Felix hadn't been involved. He'd usually been the one to set them up. Of course he'd know. The only thing he _hadn't_ ever known about was...

_Holy fuck._ It wasn't that easy. There was no fucking way it was that easy. Was it?

"How many people did I have sex with?" Felix said quickly, hurrying to get the words out of his mouth before he changed his mind.

Locus opened his mouth, closed it, and after half a minute looking severely at a loss for words, said helplessly, "What?"

"You heard me." The sense of urgency rising inside of him made no sense, they weren't in any danger of attack or interruption, but it was there just the same and Felix couldn't ignore it. "How many people?"

"Have you forgotten?" Locus responded dryly, still clearly confused but obviously trying to make the best of it with sarcasm.

With painfully slow enunciation, Felix ground out, "Would you just answer the goddamn question?"

For a moment, Locus continued looking at him like he'd lost his mind. Then, as Felix felt his patience snap, he rolled his eyes and told him, "Sixteen."

That wasn't the answer he'd been given in the future and the strange urgent tension abruptly dissolved into disappointment. _Shit._ Not only did it not help his maybe-case, now he was going to need to explain that too. Right up until he remembered that woman from the bar and realized that the discrepancy didn't mean a damn thing.

The disappointment evaporated, leaving the first sparks of excitement in its wake. "You killed fourteen of them, didn't you?"

He would have been lying if he claimed that seeing Locus visibly start in surprise wasn't a little gratifying. "Yes," Locus admitted, giving him a look that he wasn't sure he'd ever seen before. _Is that... appreciation? Approval?_ "I didn't think you knew."

"I didn't," Felix confessed. "Not until you told me, anyway." Watching that weird look melt into constipated annoyance clued him in to how that sounded. "In—" _Fuck_. He sighed. "Look, can I tell you something without you judging me?"

Without missing a beat, Locus replied, "Probably not."

_You are such a fucking asshole._ Knowing there was only one way to get Locus to stop being a fuck and listen to him without the stupid jokes, Felix gave him a flat, deadly serious look and said softly, "Sam, I mean it."

Locus spread his hands in surrender. "All right."

Except, now that he had Locus' cooperation, Felix didn't know where to go with it. Scowling, he ran both hands through his hair. "Fuck, I don't know where to start with this."

Always an unhelpful bastard at the worst times, Locus offered benignly, "Try the beginning."

Glancing at him through the gap between his forearms, Felix gave him a withering look. It bounced off the impervious facade of Locus' flat expression, just like every one of its fellows that had come before. Dejectedly, knowing there was no way out of it now, he dropped his hands from his hair and, ignoring the chair, hoisted himself up onto the console. Accidentally sitting on the wrong button and causing the ship to self-destruct would have gotten him out of the conversation, but nothing so fortuitous happened. The console didn't even give a disgruntled beep.

"You remember going to that abandoned bunker to retrieve that weaponry? What's his name told us about it. Gibble? Tibble? Frank? Something."

"Gibson," Locus, the veritable fount of useless and unnecessary information, murmured.

" _Whatever_. If you interrupt me all the damn time, this is going to be a long fucking story."

Contrary to the nature of his offense, Locus didn't look contrite. The stupid asshole didn't even apologize. All he did was cross his arms over his chest and then flick the fingers resting against his bicep in Felix's direction, like royalty giving a peasant permission to speak.

_Jackass._ "Anyway, the teleportation grenade must've malfunctioned or something, because when I came out of it, I was in the future." Locus looked like he was going to interrupt again, probably to point out that that wasn't possible. Felix tipped his head sideways, frowned at him in warning, and kept going. "Four years in the future. In some warehouse or something on Gilgamesh. You found me there. Seems a two-bit arms dealer was trying to mass produce some alien tech that put the Purge to shame and you were on some bullshit quest to save the universe. You paid me to help you take out Alvaro. We fought a lot because you had a guilty conscience about fucking Wash and letting me die. Ended up killing Alvaro and saving the universe, I guess. I don't know. I died. _Again_. Because of Wash. And then ended up back on Chorus like I'd never left."

It was a little sparse on the details, but Felix made sure to hit all of the important bits. As far as he was concerned, that was all he needed to say on the subject. Predictably, that wasn't enough for Locus. "What?"

He had to go over it twice. Once because he repeated everything he'd just said and was told to "try again and elaborate this time" and again with the requested elaboration. Then they had to spend twenty minutes arguing over whether teleportation grenades actually worked like that—they both agreed that they didn't, but as Felix insisted, evidently that particular grenade hadn't read its operating manual—and another forty-five going over everything he knew about Santos Alvaro, the weapons he was trying to make, and the facilities he was using to develop and store them. Locus had a number of questions about his mysterious contact, some of which Felix also harbored, but he had no answers to any of those and could only respond with variations of _I don't know, fuck if I know,_ and _what part of I don't fucking know don't you understand_?

Wash and the role he played in the whole stupid fiasco barely got a comment out of Locus, which Felix took as a testament to his poorly concealed lust for the son of a bitch. The subject of his death and Locus' involvement in it turned out to be a thorny issue. Locus wanted details, Felix took offense to practically everything he asked and wanted to know why he was asking it in the first place, and more often than not, he didn't have an answer that satisfied either of them. But that didn't stop Locus from asking or Felix from snapping back.

"You're saying I let the sims kill you because I was mad at you?"

"Yes."

Locus rubbed at his face like he was trying to massage away a headache. "Why was I mad at you?"

That was the million credit question. Why _was_ Locus mad at him? The answer Locus had given him in the future only made minimal sense to Felix and thinking about it the last few days hadn't provided any illuminating revelations. Sure, he'd encouraged Locus' descent into emotionless killer, but that had been what Locus had _wanted._ He could've resisted it, could've argued against it and tried to push him away from it, but he had a hard fucking time believing that Locus wouldn't have gotten angry and fed up with him if he had.

He shrugged, letting his gaze slip sideways so that Locus wasn't _quite_ in focus. "Because I never tried to stop you. When you decided to go the emotionless robot route, I never did anything about it."

Half expecting Locus to blow up at him for that, Felix was surprised when he didn't react beyond a confused, "Like what?"

"I don't fucking know." He focused back on Locus' eyes. "What am I, a psychiatrist? I let it happen. I could've tried to change your mind but I didn't."

"So?"

For a man that was willing to let his partner die over inaction, it was weird as hell that he wasn't getting upset over talking about it. Locus still looked and sounded puzzled. And instead of being relieved that they weren't getting into a physical fight over it or that Locus wasn't actively trying to kill him, Felix just felt annoyed. _Why the fuck are you so goddamn calm about it now? You were willing to kill me for it before._

"You found out and felt betrayed," Felix told him, eyeing him closely as he said it.

The effort was for nothing. Locus didn't explode at hearing that he _ought_ to be exploding. "Why?"

Felix lifted his hands. "How should I know? I'm not you."

Locus went silent after that and for once, Felix let him be. They sat like that for a while, Locus thinking about fuck only knew what and Felix trying to figure out if Locus' lack of anger meant that it had all be a figment of his imagination. That didn't explain knowing about his little homicidal hobby, but maybe there was a less unbelievable explanation for that. Maybe there had been tiny clues, imperceptible to Felix's conscious mind but glaringly obvious to his subconscious.

Maybe he'd just made a huge fucking mistake talking about all of this.

"Do you really think you traveled to the future?" Locus asked quietly, dragging Felix out of his increasingly disjointed thoughts. There was no discernible inflection in his voice and his face was unhelpfully blank. He could have been calling Felix's sanity into question or merely asking for confirmation of his perception.

_If you're going to salvage this and laugh it all off as big joke at his expense, now's the time to do it._ Felix knew that doing that would piss him off, but he also knew that after he got over it, he'd let it go and then they'd probably never talk about it again. _He_ wouldn't stop thinking about it and would likely overanalyze everything for the next four years, but Locus wouldn't think he was a lunatic. Just an asshole with a shitty sense of humor.

_Nope. Ha ha. You actually fell for that bullshit, didn't you? Christ, you're a gullible idiot._ He could hear it so clearly. He could see Locus' put-out scowl and hear his disgusted sigh. The next two days of not speaking to one another played out in his mind like a movie he'd watched so many times that he'd inadvertently memorized it.

But what he was horrified to hear himself saying was, "Yeah, maybe. I don't know. It seems impossible, but it all felt so fucking real. Sort of? Yeah."

He chanced a wary glance in Locus' direction, just waiting for the condemnation and judgment and some sort of accusation that made the whole mess his fault. All he saw, though, was thoughtfulness. That blank, neutral expression Locus tended to get when he was considering something that he didn't have strong feelings about either way. But just because he wasn't in the throes of disapproval didn't mean that an episode wouldn't start.

There was only one way to get ahead of it. Throw out some accusations of his own.

"You don't believe me, do you?" Felix glared at him as fiercely as if he'd said the words himself. "You think I'm crazy."

After all the snide comments and assertions he'd made over the years that Locus was the crazy one, there would probably be some kind of poetic justice in Locus lobbing that assessment his way. But if there was one lesson Felix had learned in his nearly four decades worth of life, it was that justice was subjective. And poetry was a whole lot of navel-gazing, woe-is-me bullshit. He had no patience for any freakish hybrids of the two.

Locus must not have realized that his moment to be vindictive asshole had come, because instead of reveling in the overturned tables, he simply shook his head. "I didn't say that."

"You didn't say anything."

"That's because I'm thinking."

It was a perfectly valid reason. "Think faster," Felix retorted, not willing to accept it.

Locus heaved one of those bottomless sighs he was so fond of, but disapproval wasn't taking over his expression and he only looked slightly annoyed. "You've had months to think about it. You're only giving me a few minutes."

That was also valid. Felix could understand the huge disparity between a few minutes and a few months and how Locus might be at a disadvantage because of it. Just like he knew that not having experienced the whole mess also gave Locus an additional hurdle to overcome on his path toward making a decision about what he felt about it. But Felix wasn't interested in pandering to logic.

Logic was Locus' department. Examining a problem from every angle, reaching as many conclusions as possible so that all potential outcomes might be planned for, analyzing useless minutiae _just in case_ something important could be gleaned from it: that was all crap Locus did. Not just because he was good at it, but also because he actually _liked_ that kind of tedious bullshit. He could logic himself through anything, given enough time to consider it, but Felix didn't have forever for him to meander his way to a solid conclusion. He needed to know right the fuck _now_ what Locus thought of what had happened to him.

"Give me your impression then," he urged, spinning his wrist in a _hurry the fuck up_ gesture. "You can submit the thesis and all of its annotations to Boring Asshole Digest later."

Locus eyed him for a moment, his expression so dry that he didn't need to say anything for Felix to know exactly what it meant. But as critical as it was of him, his intelligence, and his comprehension skills, he didn't reiterate it with a verbal condemnation the way Felix was expecting. "I don't think you're lying to me."

It wasn't what he asked and it wasn't what he needed to hear, yet it didn't keep him from wanting clarification. "Why?"

"I know when you're lying to me," Locus replied simply.

A curious predicament befell him then. Pride told him that he needed to correct that insultingly bogus claim, while self-interest told pride to fuck off and let the idiot think whatever he wanted. In the middle of it, wildly conflicted and suffering from an acute sense of unidentifiable unease, Felix wrinkled his nose. "Well..."

Locus gave him a hard, no-nonsense stare. "I know when you're lying to me," he said slowly, pronouncing each word like a toll of doom.

Pride won. "You sure let me get away with a lot of bullshit, then," Felix told him critically.

"I know."

_Had to open your big, stupid mouth, didn't you?_ A course correction was necessary, before they wandered so far off-track that they spent the next three hours painstakingly going over every stupid decision Felix had made during the past week. There'd been a lot of them. Probably triple the number of _actual_ dumb decisions if Locus was doing the counting.

"I didn't ask if you _believed_ me." Although, and he would never tell Locus that he felt that way, it was actually kind of nice to hear that he believed him. "I asked if you thought I was crazy."

He shouldn't have pressed his luck. "Because of what you've just told me?" Locus asked dubiously, like the answer was so fucking obvious he needed some clarification on what he was meant to be making a judgment on.

Left with no alternative, Felix hissed, "I hate you."

Locus ignored the statement so completely that he didn't even blink. "It sounds farfetched—" Bristling with offense, Felix opened his mouth, but he wasn't given an opportunity to get a word in. "—but it's alien tech. There's plenty we don't understand about how it operates."

That sure was a lot of dancing around. "Yes or fucking no?"

It looked like he was going to say something else, but right before he had to commit to it, Locus just sighed and shook his head. "No."

_So now what?_ Felix wanted to demand. _What do we do now?_ Because he sure as fuck didn't know. The problem was, he didn't think Locus was up to making a decision either. He looked like he could barely remember his name. Expecting him to know how to handle time travel was probably asking too much of him. But at the same time, Felix didn't know how to deal with it either.

_Fuck it. He got us into this mess. He can figure out how to get us out._

"What was I like?" Locus suddenly asked, interrupting him before he could get his mouth open.

That wasn't something he wanted to talk about with him. Or anyone else, for that matter. And because playing dumb was one of Locus' favorite pastimes, Felix decided to give him a taste of it. "What?"

_Drop it. Just fucking drop it._ Even before he'd scrubbed what little personality he had, Locus had hated opening up about his thoughts and feelings. He'd done it a few times, usually under the influence of some kind of persuasion, but those instances had grown fewer and farther between as he'd bled himself of his emotions. So there was a fairly good chance that being forced to clarify and ask again would discourage him from—

"In the future," he said, choosing the wrong fucking thing to be so doggedly persistent about. "What was I like?"

Felix looked him dead in the eyes and said, with complete, unfiltered honesty, "An asshole."

Locus didn't have to respond in words. He was radiating so much fierce constipation that his counterpart in the future was probably ransacking his gourmet kitchen for prunes.

_I hate you so much_. Because Locus was digging his heels in, and when he got this stubborn over something, he was never going to let it go until Felix gave in and did what he wanted. "I don't know," he snapped. "Different."

"How?"

_Like you were_. Except there was no way in hell he was opening himself up to that. "It's hard to explain."

"Try."

The only recourse available to him, he realized, was to get his own brand of revenge and make Locus regret asking. And the best way to do that was to visit upon him his worst nightmare.  "You took me to a bar," Felix told him with vindictive glee. "It was _your_ idea. And later, you asked me if I wanted to go to a club."

Visceral distaste worked its way into Locus' expression as he digested that. _Bet you're happy you asked now, huh, motherfucker?_ "Why?"

Felix shrugged. "Because you wanted to try fun? I don't fucking know."

Warily, as if he expected to be told that he got up on the bar and performed a striptease to whatever terrible pop song was popular in that section of the galaxy, Locus asked, "What happened?"

It was _so_ tempting to lie to him. He almost did it, too. But from the looks of things, Locus was already going through an identity crisis. Throwing that in there would probably break him and turn him into a gibbering idiot.

"You tried to drink me under the table. We killed a bunch of gang members who were trying to rough up the bartender because you wanted to save the day and I was bored. We got some free drinks." _And then we fucked on your kitchen counter._ "Then we called it a night and went back to your mid-life crisis penthouse."

Locus didn't look like he believed him, leading him to wonder if it was due to that claim that he knew when he was lying or fear that there was a future full of impromptu dance numbers somewhere hilariously embarrassing in store for him. "That's it?"

"Yes," Felix replied, rolling his eyes. "You can relax. I didn't make you go to the club."

He still didn't look convinced, but instead of asking more stupid-ass questions, he mulled it over in silence. And because he didn't need company while he dredged the depths of his soul looking for his personality, Felix made for the door. There'd been far too much honesty and emotional vulnerability already. He wasn't going to tolerate being tortured with any more of it.

Mere meters from the door, Locus called out to him. "Felix."

In the pause between him taking a breath and getting around to whatever the rest of it was going to be, Felix hurriedly interrupted. "I have shit to do."

"What?" came the needlessly suspicious response.

Felix glowered at him over his shoulder. "Not fucking talk to you." As Locus' face started contracting into a frown, he added, "It happened. Then a whole bunch of other shit happened. And then I came back to all this stupid shit. So mope around about your future as the life of the party on your own time. I'm done talking about it." 

He couldn't be any clearer than that. If Locus still didn't get it, well too fucking bad for him. Marching for the door, this time he made it into the doorway before Locus spoke. 

"What was the name?"

And because it wasn't about his future self or Wash or what Felix thought of their engagement party invitations, he paused. "Whose name?"

"The target we assassinated."

_Figures._ If he wasn't interested in digging through shit Felix didn't want to talk about, he wanted to obsess over a job that wasn't even an issue anymore. With a disgusted sigh, he tossed back to him, "Santos Alvaro."  

Then the doors slid closed behind him and he hurried off to the quarters he'd claimed as his own before Locus could find another reason to bother him.

* * *

With one day remaining before they left slipspace and the rapidly increasing possibility that he was going to go crazy if he didn't _do_ something, Felix cleared a bunch of junk out of one of the ship's cargo holds and resolved to burn off all of his excess energy through some hardcore Basic-esque training. For the first hour, he lobbed a knife at a target over and over from a variety of distances and in the midst of doing about a dozen different things. After he could reliably hit the same spot with his eyes closed, he moved on to more physically intensive exercises.

He was in the middle of a series of push-ups—boring as fuck to do but effectively exhausting—when he heard the unmistakable sound of knuckles rapping against metal. _Oh for fuck's sake_ , he thought irritably, ignoring the interruption until he completed three more of the things and reached an even hundred and forty. Then he let himself drop to the floor and rolled over to look at the nuisance leaning against the doorway.

"What?" he demanded, shoving himself up into a sitting position.

"I checked out Alvaro," Locus announced, without even a tiny shred of shame. 

"Oh, that's just great." A surge of annoyance brought him to his feet and he let it carry him over to where he'd set down a water bottle. "What happened to all that bullshit about believing me?"

It was tempting to fling it at Locus' big fat head, but the likelihood of scoring a hit was pretty low. Even though his arms were folded loosely across his chest, Felix knew that no matter how hard he threw it, Locus could move fast enough to catch it before it made contact. And he would. There was no doubt about that.

"As far as I can tell," Locus continued, ignoring the question entirely. "He hasn't found the weapon."

Felix allowed himself a moment to take a gulp of water before tackling this latest non sequitur. "So? What fucking difference—"

"We can stop him."

That made absolutely no sense. _Stop him from what? He isn't doing anything._ "What?"

Locus looked at him like he thought he was being difficult on purpose. "If we apprehend him before he acquires the original weapon, we can prevent what you saw."

There were three different directions he could run with that bullshit statement, all of them equally comment-worthy, and for an instant of indecision, it was anyone's guess which one his brain would take. " _Apprehend_ him?"

"You said he was trafficking in humans. Testing the prototypes on them." 

While the brief summation of Alvaro's crimes proved that Locus had been listening to him when he'd told him about his experience in the future, it didn't answer his incredulous question. _Apprehending him_ sounded like the toothless bullshit that the rainbow morons would have come up with. Not Locus. Even the future version hadn't talked about _apprehending_ Alvaro.

"Yeah, so?" Felix prompted, after giving Locus an opportunity to explain what the hell he was talking about that he failed to take.

"So we stop it before it starts."

_Why?_ The thought had no sooner appeared in his brain than it flew directly out of his mouth. "Why?"

Locus tipped his chin down and gave him Disapproving Look #23: _I know you aren't deaf and I'm pretty sure you aren't this stupid._ "To save those people."

He might as well have been speaking Spanish for all that Felix could understand him. He lifted his eyebrows, hoping that a visual aid would help get it through his thick fucking head that he wasn't making any goddamn sense. "Again, I ask: why? It's not our fucking business."

And more importantly, who the hell cared? They weren't anyone Felix knew and it wouldn't have mattered if they had been. Random bits of human refuse weren't worth the hassle of what Locus was proposing. Because there wasn't going to be anyone paying them if they struck out on their own after the bastard. And more importantly, _Felix had died stopping him the last time._ He hadn't bounced around time and the galaxy just to go die for the third fucking time in some underground compound.

"We can do something about it," Locus said, sounding like he was running out of patience for telling him something he thought Felix ought to have already known. "You have knowledge of what he intends to do." 

"So what?" Felix challenged, unconsciously gripping the bottle too hard and accidentally sloshing some of the water out onto his hand. 

Locus rolled his eyes. "So we ought to take advantage of the intelligence you've gathered." 

"In case you haven't noticed yet, asshole, I already did. We're here!" He gestured toward the ship, trying to encompass the retreat from Chorus before they'd finished the job. "I'm alive. Advantage taken." 

"There's more at stake here than your life." 

An instant later, an upside-down bottle appeared in Locus' hand, centimeters from his face. Felix watched water pour out of it, soaking the front of Locus' shirt and pants, before he realized that his hand was empty. His heart was pounding, he was breathing harder than he'd been during all those push-ups, and he could barely hear through the ringing in his ears. After a few seconds, his throat started to hurt, though he couldn't be sure if it was because of how harsh he was breathing or how tight the muscles were from the fury choking him into involuntary silence. 

Something about his expression must have pierced the obliviousness of Locus' self-righteous bullshit, because his brows drew together and his lips pursed in some sign of who the fuck knew what. Thought, maybe. "Felix," he started quietly, lifting his free hand. 

" _I died because of you_ ," Felix hissed, the words clawing up out of his throat, edged in razor-blades and broken glass. He must have taken a few steps forward, but he didn't register any of them. He was just suddenly halfway across the distance separating them. The next batch of words burst out of his mouth much louder than the first. "I died _for_ you!" And then he was shouting. "And you have the gall to tell me that my fucking life doesn't matter?" 

Locus' face was going through the aftermath of some kind of emotional hurricane, but whatever it was that he was feeling wasn't readily apparent because his expression wouldn't quite settle into anything Felix was familiar with. And it didn't matter anyway. Felix was _long_ past caring what Locus felt about anything. 

"That isn't what I meant," he said, after what looked like a few aborted attempts to speak.

At this distance and under these circumstances, there were seven ways Felix could kill him with the knife tucked into his waistband. He could definitely pull off three of them before Locus could stop him. Maybe four if he moved _really_ fast. Very softly, and with far more care than he'd probably said anything in his life, he whispered, "Then say _exactly_ what you mean _right now_."

And if it was even remotely close to the wrong thing, he wasn't going to be breathing by the time they reached Venezia.

Years ago, during an especially terrifying battle against the Covenant, their squad had been surrounded by a dozen Mgalekgolos. Two were usually difficult enough to handle, but that many was a massacre waiting to happen. And Private Sanderson, in one of the worst aiming disasters Felix had ever witnessed from anyone with a rocket launcher, had managed to kill four of them. Four _separate_ Mgalekgolos. Which meant that not only did they have to deal with two pairs, but four enraged singles that, after the deaths of their mates, went berserk. And Locus, de facto squad leader after the real one took a round from a fuel rod cannon right to the face, had firmly informed the panicking soldiers that they were going to clear the area come hell or high water and, mid-lecture, killed two of the things without so much as flinching.

_Nothing_ , in all of the years they'd spent weathering one horrific shitstorm after another, fazed the guy. But right then, _right that very second_ , Locus looked slightly uneasy.

Felix could feel the seconds ticking by with every beat of his heart in the deafening silence. _One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Sev—_

"I meant," Locus said slowly, licking at his lip like he needed the additional fraction of a second to get his thoughts in order. "That there are more opportunities presented by your experience than only that of your survival and we ought to take advantage of them." 

He was so tense that he could feel the trembling of overtaxation in his muscles, yet he remained perfectly balanced on the pinpoint of indecision, waiting for the full impact of Locus' words to push him one way or another. It didn't come.

And Locus, seeing that he wasn't reacting, did the most dangerous thing he would probably ever do and opened his mouth again. "I don't know what happened in the future. I can't control that. But I'm here now. So are you. We _can_ control this."

_But will you?_ With that thought came the snapping of the frozen suspension he'd been trapped in. Felix took a slow breath in through his nose and Locus exhaled one through his mouth. The danger had passed. He was still angry—he was _hurt_ , but without an effective way to acknowledge it and cope with it, he had to be angry instead—and he still felt like punching Locus in the face, but he could at least talk without the murderous fury strangling him into silence.

"And you want to _help_ these assholes," Felix sneered, making no effort to hide how distasteful he found the prospect. "For free."

"Yes."

Unconsciously, his eyes narrowed so far that he could barely see out of them. That wasn't what they were. That wasn't what _he_ was. _But it's what_ he's _going to be_ , a slippery voice whispered in the back of Felix's mind. _You saw it. Just because you're still alive isn't going to change anything._ _He's going to slip through your fingers and there's nothing you can do about it._

It hadn't seemed to bother Locus in the future, but that Locus had spent four years dealing with the hole that Felix’s absence had left in his life. Regardless of how dissimilar their motivations and approaches to people had become, he’d missed him enough to overlook the reality of the situation: Felix was never going to be able to become what he had. But _this_ Locus hadn’t gone through any of that. He hadn’t experienced a reorganization of his priorities.

He was going to merrily continue on down the path to spineless pacifism and law-abiding goodwill toward men. And when he discovered that dragging Felix kicking and screaming down it with him wasn’t going to make him change, he was going to get fed up with him and leave. He would abandon him the way that Felix had always known that he would. Probably would end up joining Wash and the rest of those idiotic, disgusting do-gooders and gallivant around the galaxy playing Master Chief to all and sundry.

And there wasn’t a goddamn thing Felix could do to stop it from happening.

The old familiar panic was starting to claw its way up out of the dark, fathomless depths in which it dwelled and with it came sickening jealousy and bitter resentment. It didn’t matter that he’d been a hairsbreadth away from killing Locus a moment ago. Locus was _his_. His to protect, his to touch, his to kill if need be. And he was going to lose him _again_. Not to someone faster or stronger or deadlier. Not to emotionless apathy. Not even to death. Felix could handle those threats, he could be _better_ than those threats. He could overcome them and conquer them.

But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how cleverly he pretended, he could never be the antithesis of what he truly was.

“Felix.”

It sounded like Locus’ voice was coming from a long way away. Felix heard it, assessed it for tones of urgency or disappointment and, finding none, dismissed it as unimportant. It wasn’t a priority. Chasing down a solution to the looming problem of Locus’ eventual disappearance was the more pressing concern. And he had to do it soon. Before Locus realized there was no outcome where Felix followed him into this disturbing future and _didn’t_ gleefully murder a large proportion of those he managed to save simply to exorcise his mounting frustration and possessive jealousy.

“ _Felix_.” It was sharper, maybe a bit louder, but ultimately easy to ignore for a second time. Until firm, callused hands took a hard grip on his bare shoulders and jostled him out of his darkening downward spiral. “Look at me.”

He wasn’t trying to be agreeable when he looked directly into Locus’ eyes. He simply blinked his distraction away, focused on the present, and the cant of his head just so happened to direct his gaze that way.

“What?” he asked, mulishly.

“Just try,” Locus said intently, like he was trying to force the willingness to cooperate with him into Felix’s brain through sheer determination and willpower.

Seeing the worst of his fears already coming to life before he’d even agreed to take part in the idiotic scheme, he bristled. “You can’t change me!”

“What?” A momentary look of confusion scurried across Locus’ face. It must have unsettled him, because he shook his head and then, apparently thinking it would help, gave Felix a short, sharp shake as well. “I don’t want to change you. I want your help.”

For a brief, dizzying instant, he felt gripped by déjà vu. But the situation wasn’t the same, merely Locus’ request. And it wasn’t some precognition that had a hold of him, but Locus.  Just Locus.

"You keep saying that," Felix grumbled, frowning at him. He had half a mind to shrug him off, but he couldn't manage to get the message through to his muscles.

Locus lifted his eyebrows slightly and said neutrally, almost gently, "Maybe you should start listening."

Felix tried to find the condemnation and disapproval in that mild lecture trying to masquerade as a helpful suggestion, but he couldn't. It was disguised too well. "Yeah, well, maybe if you don't get me killed again, I'll be alive to listen to your bullshit this time."

Just for an instant, it looked like something pinched at Locus' expression, but it was gone so quickly that Felix couldn't be sure it had even been there at all. _Maybe he's got gas._

"You aren't going to die," Locus said firmly, with implacable finality.

He rolled his eyes. "I've heard that one before."

Sighing, Locus squeezed his shoulders. "Felix."

As persuasive as he was trying to be, it wasn't persuasive enough. "I like killing people," Felix told him, through narrowed, suspicious eyes.

"I know."

_Wait for it._ "I'm going to _keep_ killing people," he added, for clarity's sake and in the hope that it would dispel any sort of optimistic garbage Locus was harboring for an abrupt about-face in his predilections.

"I know," Locus repeated blandly.

Felix jabbed him in the chest with one finger, right in the center of the large wet spot on his shirt. "You can't make me stop killing people."

Repetition, he knew, was one of the easiest ways to get through to someone who wasn't too much of a moron. And no matter how fucking stupid Locus acted, Felix knew he wasn't. But the whole killing people thing was obviously going to be a point of contention from now until eternity, so he figured he really needed to hammer it home.

Once again, without terribly much inflection, Locus said, "I know."

Squinting at him, Felix searched his face and very slowly, practically making the sound of each letter its own word, he stressed, " _Ever._ "

Locus just looked back at him, waiting. There was no impatience there that Felix could see. No disappointment or disapproval either. It was like some kind of game they were playing, but Felix didn't know the rules and he had a suspiciously sinking feeling that he was losing. 

"Fine," he snapped, metaphorically throwing in the towel. His actual towel was too far out of reach to literally throw at Locus' stupid face. "I'll help you save those fucking people. Happy?"

With absolutely no change in his flat expression or his unemotional tone, Locus replied, "Yes."

Making a disgusted noise, Felix shoved him away. If he'd been serious about hanging onto him, it probably wouldn't have been effective, but Locus let him go and obligingly moved back a step. "Now go away and stop bothering me. I'm right in the middle of something."

For once in his fucking life, Locus took the win. He gave him one last too scrutinizing stare, then nodded and left the cargo bay. Felix watched him go, impatiently tapping his foot against the floor until he was out of sight. As soon as he was _sure_ he was alone, he took the knife out and flung it across the room as hard as possible.

_This is going to be a motherfucking disaster. But if he lets me die again, I'm taking that son of a bitch with me._

* * *

Despite the hours he put into boring, repetitive exercise in the cargo bay, Felix couldn't sleep that night. His body was exhausted and when he flopped bonelessly onto the barely acceptable mattress of the bed he'd claimed as his own, he thought he was going to fall asleep immediately. But it didn't happen. Instead, as soon as he closed his eyes, all of the paranoia, suspicion, and dread he'd felt about Locus' stupid-ass plan came rushing back.

He tried to think about something else. _Anything_ else. Pleasantly entertaining visions of having gone after Wash on Chorus and slowly murdering him melted mid-evisceration into Locus shooting him in the back, rescuing Wash, and leaving Felix to die in a pool of his own blood. And that was the least upsetting scenario. Others were significantly worse.  

And through it all, over and over like it was stuck on repeat, he could hear Locus' voice saying the same goddamn thing: _"I didn_ _’_ _t want to be a monster and I didn_ _’_ _t know how to get back to the man I was before. I wanted his help."_  

It was just as infuriating now, hearing it in his memory, as it had been then. For Locus to turn to _Wash_ , of all people, for help in returning to someone that Wash had never even met was hard enough to swallow. But that he could have asked Felix, who knew him better than he knew himself, for that help _before_ fucking off and letting him die made it impossible for him to accept.

Chasing it was the implication that Locus also believed that Felix was a monster, which in and of itself wasn't disturbing. Felix was comfortable with who and what he was. Some part of him even reveled in the prospect of being terrifying enough to earn the moniker _monster_. But if Locus found being a monster repulsive, then he must find Felix repulsive as well. And if Felix couldn't become something else, Wash was undoubtedly the more appealing option: still dangerous, still deadly enough to keep Locus interested, but with interests and priorities that aligned with his new outlook on life.

Twisting over onto his other side with an uncomfortable huff of dismay, Felix nearly pitched himself over the edge of the bed. Only swift reflexes and a tight tangle of sheets prevented his face from making unexpected contact with the floor. He stayed there for a minute, propped up on his elbow and scowling blankly at the darkness, before he decided that he had enough.

Kicking the sheets off, he got to his feet, threw on a pair of loose pants and an ugly pair of something that might have been shoes or could have been slippers in poor disguise, and stormed out of the room. He had no direction in mind and no real idea what he meant to do. He just didn't want to keep laying there, torturing himself. And with the restlessness building inside him, moving seemed preferable to exploding.

For the better part of what might have been an hour, he paced the ship, following one corridor after another and making turns at random. He did a circuit around the bridge and passed through the mess with a vague notion of picking up something to drink that never transformed into actually following through with it. He roamed up and down the various levels of the ship, taking access tunnels and stairwells instead of the lifts so that he wouldn't ever have to stop moving.

But eventually he _did_ come to a stop in front of a door that looked no different from than any of the others that he'd passed. He stood there staring at it for an indeterminable length of time, practically frozen in place, before he finally took another step. Forward, instead of away. And the sensor, recognizing a body moving toward it, activated the door.

It slid back into the wall silently, admitting only light from the hallway into the room beyond. Felix lingered in the doorway, too surprised at finding it unlocked to continue. There was enough light streaming inside to illuminate Locus, asleep on a bed no more comfortable than his own had been. But Locus, at least, had been able to make it work.

He was lying on his back, the blankets neatly covering his chest nearly to his shoulders. From the outline of his body underneath them, one arm was bent at the elbow so that his hand could rest on his abdomen and the other was stretched out at his side. His head was turned toward the doorway, affording Felix an unobstructed view of his face, relaxed and looking far more personable in sleep than it ever did when he was awake. Some of his hair had fallen across his forehead, still nowhere near as long as it had been in the future, and there was nothing concealing the scars on his face.

Felix had no intention of watching him sleep for the rest of the night, but instead of retreating or entering the room, he kept standing there, his mind curiously blank and his body as unresponsive as a statue. Locus' chest rose and fell in slow, even breaths. There was no tension on his face, no stirring under his eyelids that might suggest that he had awoken and was simply feigning unconsciousness. Just as well, too. It would have been mortifying to have been caught and Felix was still too detached and disconnected from his body to regain control of it.

_"I didn’t know how to get it or you back. Couldn't even get myself back."_ Another whisper of the future, rattling around in Felix's inconveniently empty mind without any useful advice. Because Locus had chosen was Wash. And maybe Felix was alive now like he hadn't been then, but what fucking difference did that make? Unless he could emulate what Wash had done, unless he could make himself as invaluable to Locus' recovery as Wash had evidently been, he was going to lose him.

And he hadn't the slightest fucking clue how to do whatever the hell it was that Wash had done.

Give advice? Sit there like some kind of therapist and listen to Locus drone on and on about saving the day and being a humanitarian? Make him a gaudy outfit so that he could run around pretending to be a superhero like a child? Bleach his hair and do a little drug-induced bulking up so that he could pretend to be a discount Spartan? He didn't know how to pretend to be Wash. He didn't _want_ to pretend to be Wash. But if—

"What is it?"

Although he was staring at Locus, Felix hadn't really been _paying attention_ to him for quite a while. He was so startled by the unexpected sound of his voice that he couldn't suppress his involuntary jerk backward. Heart racing and silently cursing up a blue streak, he peered into the room. Locus' eyes were closed. He hadn't moved. But Felix knew he hadn't been imagining his voice.

"Nothing," he said defensively, folding his arms across his chest.  

There was no movement from the bed. Locus still wasn't even opening his eyes. "You're just watching me sleep?" he asked, sounding dubious.

Felix scowled uselessly at him. "How long have you been awake?"

"Since the door opened."

_Bastard._ "And you just let me stand here?" Felix demanded, dredging up the wherewithal from who the fuck knew where to restrain the volume of his voice so that he wasn't shrieking at him.

All he got in response was a non-committal noise so unrepentant that he knew that if Locus emoted like a normal person, he would be laughing at him.

"You're such an asshole," Felix muttered irritably, unamused.

"And you're still standing in the doorway."

It was true. He ought to have been leaving now that Locus had woken up and seemed hellbent on mocking him, but he just kept standing there like a fucking idiot, waiting for... He didn't even know. He had no idea what he wanted to say him, if he even wanted to say something in the first place, and he certainly wasn't expecting Locus to say anything, least of all anything that would make everything okay between them or in his head or whatever the hell the problem was. But he wasn't doing any of the sensible things he knew he should have been doing and he had no clue how to make himself start. It was like there was an enormous, irreparable disconnect between his brain, his emotions, his thoughts, and his body, culminating in a frustrating inability to _do_ anything.

"Felix." Locus' eyes were finally open now and uncomfortably focused on his face, much too clear and alert after having been awakened from a deep sleep in the middle of the night. "What do you want?"

That was the wrong question. Dozens of answers came to mind, some totally irrelevant to the situation—oranges, some of those fried things Locus had made for dinner seven years ago, new knives, more guns, a nice car, a better fucking pillow—and others so impossible—to have killed the sims before they'd left Chorus, a moon of his own, to trade this Locus for a version of the Locus he'd met in the future who hadn't slept with Wash, one of those bird-lizard things from Sangheilos—that he knew better than to even mention them. None of that self-awareness, however, presented him with a reply to the question that would explain what he was doing there and why he hadn't left yet.

"I don't know," he mumbled, letting his gaze slip sideways just far enough that he wasn't looking directly at Locus. "I was just walking around."

Slowly, like an avalanche getting started, Locus pushed himself up onto his elbow. The blankets slid downward, revealing that he hadn't worn a shirt to bed, and like a magnetic field too strong to resist, Felix found his attention drawn back to him. Yet instead of eyeing his bare chest, he zeroed in on the injured shoulder. The stitches were holding. The edges of the wound weren't showing signs of infection. Unless something happened that tore it open, it was going to heal just fine. Not invisibly, of course, there would still be a mark, but it wouldn’t be a nasty, ugly looking thing. For people that weren’t Felix, anyway. To Felix, it would always be an eyesore, offensive and repulsive, because it had been left there by Wash.

He was aware of Locus looking at him, studying him, trying to figure out what he was doing. _Good fucking luck. I don't know either._ They had reached an impasse: Locus continued to stare at him and Felix refused to meet his eyes.

After a long silence that only escaped being awkward because Felix was resolutely ignoring it, Locus sighed and sat up. The blankets slid lower, and as he settled back against the wall, upright and facing the doorway, they pooled around his waist, conveniently obscuring whether he was wearing anything at all.

"Come in."

That did what heavy stares and tantalizing hints of nudity could not. It made Felix look at him. "What?"

Locus tipped his head sideways. "Come in. Tell me what's going on."

_Time to go_ , he told his feet sternly, only for them to disobediently shuffle forward until there was enough room behind him for the door to close. _Wrong fucking way, assholes._ There were enough electronics on in the room to provide some illumination—a dormant holoscreen, another active screen displaying a digital readout of the time and the ship's coordinates, the dim glow of backlights on the console at the other side of the room—but none of it was as bright as the hallway had been and it took a few seconds for Felix's eyes to adjust.

"Sit down." When Felix grudgingly started looking for a chair, Locus nodded to the vacant end of the bed.

"Are we having a slumber party now?" Felix replied sarcastically, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "Should I go back and get the nail polish?"

"Just sit down." A hint of exhaustion crept into Locus' voice, but Felix didn't know if it came from having his sleep disturbed or from dealing with him. It could've been both.

It reminded him of that night after the bar in the future. Locus sitting on the bed, trying to engage him in a conversation he wanted absolutely no parts of, and Felix doing his damnedest to wriggle out of it. But this one wasn't going to be a heartfelt exploration of the benefits of fucking Wash. It was going to be...

He didn't fucking know what it was going to be.

Throwing himself moodily down onto a normal bed would have made the whole thing shake and would have jostled Locus at least a _little_ bit. Because this one was fastened securely to the floor and the wall, it didn't even vibrate. Felix shoved his back against the wall, folded his legs underneath himself, and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Well?" he demanded, giving Locus a sharp look. "What do you want?"

Locus stared back, emotionless. "You tell me."

"What do you want me to say?" Frustration caused the words to practically explode out of him. "I don't _know_. I couldn't sleep. I went for a walk. Just because I ended up here doesn't mean I wanted to talk to you."

"Do you?"

" _No._ " Scowling, Felix stared down at his lap. It was better than looking at Locus and seeing whatever it was that kept trying to steal across his face. "I..." He shook his head, opened his mouth again, and heard himself asking, without any input from his brain, "Did you mean it?"

Cautiously, like he was handling an improvised bomb that had been tossed to him from a crazy Unggoy, Locus returned a wary, "Mean what?"

_Yeah?_ Felix challenged his rebellious mouth. _Mean what? You got us into this mess. Any time you want to get us out would be great._ "You—The future you—" Locus' face was already tightening into what Felix just knew would be a frown. He almost couldn't blame him this time. Maybe his mouth couldn't either, because it gave up on that doomed course and blurted out, "Do you really think you're a monster?"

It wasn't what he'd been expecting to say, and from the way Locus was looking at him, almost visibly surprised, he hadn't been expecting it either. But unlike Felix, he didn't try to change the subject or turn it back around on him.

"Yes."

Somehow, Wash had helped him with that and that had made all the difference. But Felix's mind wasn't filling up with dubious advice or wise-sounding bullshit. He was tensing, bristling with offense because Locus had just confirmed his suspicions. He _did_ think he was a monster and he _didn't_ want him.

Locus must have seen something of his rapidly darkening thoughts on his face. There wasn't any other reason Felix could fathom for how easily he offered up an explanation without needing to be prompted. "We used to _fight_ wars. On Chorus, we created one. Innocent people died for Hargrove's greed. We would have killed everyone if we'd used the Purge. Soldiers and civilians. For what?"

"Money?" Felix hazarded, unsure of where Locus was going with this. "A lot of money? Revenge?"

"That isn't who we are," Locus returned firmly, a tiny hint of something that might have been disappointment, disapproval, or the bastard offspring of both in his voice. "We joined the war to help humanity survive. We became bounty hunters to help people get justice. What we did on Chorus helped no one."

Felix stared at him, momentarily at a loss for words. That was one way of looking at it, sure, but it wasn't the _right_ one. Whatever Sam Ortez's reasons for joining the UNSC had been, Isaac Gates had signed up because if the Covenant was going to exterminate the human race, then he wanted to take as many of the ugly bastards with him as possible. And he'd become a bounty hunter afterward because he hadn't known what the hell else to do and Locus had wanted to do it. _Helping people_ —which people did Locus think he wanted to help, anyway?—had been the last thing on his mind.

"So..." He might've been tempted to laugh at how ridiculous Locus was, but he was too busy being offended to find humor in it. "You don't want me around anymore either. That's what you're saying?"

"No." At least Locus' rejection of the idea was immediate. "That isn't—"

Felix kept going. "By your definition, I'm a monster too and you just got done telling me that you're done with monsters."

"You aren't—"

Like he could read his mind, Felix knew what he was going to say. "Open your fucking eyes and _look at me_ , Locus! I'm not some poor wounded soldier who lost his way after the war ended. I'm a killer. I've _always_ been a killer. Aliens, scumbags, losers on Chorus, it doesn't fucking matter. I don't care about any of them."

He rubbed at his face with the heel of his palm, trying to work the tension headache out before it could get a foothold. "And I get it, okay?" Felix lowered his hand and met Locus' eyes. "That _isn't_ you. But it _is_ me and you can't just—" He made a sound of frustration low in his throat. "I don't know what the hell you want me to do. Wait around until you realize that no matter how many people you save, I'm still going to be that monster you hate so much?"

Locus _was_ looking at him, but quite frankly, Felix wasn't sure he was actually seeing him any more clearly than he evidently ever had. He didn't respond immediately, he just stared at him like he was making damn sure that Felix saw him looking at him. Then, after the silent staring dragged on for so long that Felix was starting to get antsy, he said implacably, "I don't hate you."

Felix raised an eyebrow in challenge. "You sure about that?"

Instead of providing a verbal answer that could be swatted aside and ignored as easily as everything else he ever tried to say, Locus glowered at him like he'd said something so idiotic that he'd finally given up on trying to use words since Felix was obviously too retarded to understand them.

Undaunted, Felix glared back at him. And then, because he had never been able to just shut the fuck up and let well enough alone, he heard himself asking peevishly, "You want to know what I saw in that temple?"  
  
Locus pounced on that as fast as a starving doarmir finally sighting prey. "Yes."

_Too bad._ It was serve Locus right if he changed his mind about telling him. Everything in him wanted to immediately reverse course as soon as he heard the words echoing around the small room. There was nothing even remotely appealing about spreading his insecurities and paranoia out for Locus' scrutiny and eventual unpleasant judgment. But laying it out there for the big idiot might actually get him to understand, and theoretically, that would make the whole sorry debacle worth it.

Maybe. The jury was still out on that score. Felix hoped that would be the case, anyway.

He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "You. I—"

A wise man, after waiting so long to hear something he'd been pestering about, would have let him fucking finish before opening his mouth. But not Locus. "You're afraid of _me_?" he asked, sounding equally affronted and dismayed. 

Feeling a little offended himself, Felix vehemently shook his head. "No, not _you._ What the hell, Locus?" He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the very idea. _What kind of cowardly, spineless asshole do you take me for?_ "Of course I'm not afraid of _you._ "

That was like being afraid of a very sharp, wickedly curved knife that never went dull no matter how many bones it cut through. Or a high-powered precision handgun with no recoil and a magazine of unlimited capacity. It was the stuff of fucking dreams and insatiable longing. Nothing to be _afraid_ of.

Perturbed by the gross misjudgment of his character, Felix eyed him in open disappointment and disgust. Locus looked right back at him, intense and with his eyes opened a little too wide, like he was trying to will Felix into clarification and elaboration. It was _so_ tempting to refuse to do it.

He sighed, so heavily that he felt like he was dredging the breath up from down around his toes. "I saw you leaving me." It was as straightforward as he could make it, without any of the dancing around he would have preferred to employ. But because he was talking to King Dipshit, he figured that he couldn't just let it at that. Knowing his luck, Locus would assume he meant leaving him in the parking lot of one of those hideous discount department stores that inexplicably cropped up in the more civilized areas of the Outer Colonies and, while that definitely would be terrifying, it wasn't _the worst_ thing that could happen to him. "Abandoning me when I need you."

The understanding that he ought to have been seeing on Locus' face wasn't there. All he could make out was bewildered confusion, which was echoed by his voice a moment later. "What?"

"What what?" Uncrossing his arms, Felix lifted his hands into the air. "Did you turn on your selective hearing again or did you forget how to speak English? I don't know how to say any of this shit in Spanish, so you better remember in a fucking hurry because I'm sure as hell not going to repeat all this later."

With enunciation that was a little too painstaking and slow, like he was talking to a fucking idiot, Locus said, "I just don't understand."

Felix rolled his eyes, which might not have been as obvious in the low lighting as he would have liked. "I'm stunned by this astonishing revelation," he drawled dryly.

Locus took a visible deep breath. "Why would you think that?"

"That, what? That you'd ditch me and leave to me to die?" Felix stared at him. "Gee, I don't know."

A hiss of exasperation left Locus' mouth that might have been Felix's name.

_It's like you don't even try to listen to me when I talk to you._ Briefly, he debated shouting at him. It was possible that his hearing had been damaged during the war and all of the oblivious cluelessness he exhibited on a regular basis stemmed from being half-deaf. Unlikely, but somewhere within the realm of possibility.

"Oh for fuck's—" He cut off with a growl of irritation. "Because _you're_ that soldier, okay?" As difficult a time as Locus was having following along to a simple conversational thread, he probably should have taken the time to clarify that he was harkening back to something he'd _just said_ , but he'd lost what little patience he had. "You're a good guy who got fucked up by all the shit we went through. I'm not. And it's always just been a matter of time before you realized that."

Frowning as he fell silent, Felix gave him a quick once-over and amended that pronouncement. "I assumed. I don't know. You're acting like a clueless fucking moron now."

He expected him to take offense at that. He usually didn't appreciate being called a moron, but Locus was looking at him like _he_ was the clueless fucking moron. "I know what you are, Isaac."

There were too many _Isaacs_ lately. He'd barely gotten used to it during his stint in the future, when Locus had seemed more like the person he'd been and less like the murderous robot. Now, with Locus in a bizarre state of flux, it was just fucking weird. Felix crossed his arms and glowered petulantly down the bed at him.

"I've always known," Locus continued, still speaking with that measured cadence that he used with people of limited intellectual capacity. "I'm still here."

_Only because I didn't try to kill your precious Freelancer this time._ "But?" Felix prompted, when nothing else was forthcoming.

Locus shook his head. "We killed for no reason."

"Money," Felix interjected helpfully.

Ignoring him as if he hadn't said anything, Locus continued. "I don't want to do that anymore. We had a purpose once. We can have one again."

"Yeah, money. That was our purpose. And fun," Felix added wistfully. "Fun was nice too. I know you hate it, but _I_ like it."

It was like he was talking to himself. Locus ignored that too. He just looked at him for a minute too long, like he was trying to find something that wasn't there or coming to a stupid-ass decision Felix wasn't going to like. Either way, it was uncomfortable. Felix felt uneasily exposed and weirdly vulnerable and he didn't fucking like it.

"You didn't come here to tell me any of this," Locus eventually told him. Felix opened his mouth to refute it, but it was true and he didn't want to pretend that prying open the dark recesses of his mind had been his intention. Slowly, he pressed his lips back together. "Why did you really come here?"

_I don't like this._ Sharp as Locus nearly always was about work and anything unrelated to personal matters, he rarely showed this level of perceptive insight into Felix's actions and motivations. He didn't know why it was happening now or what had changed, but as Locus watched him and he conveniently let his gaze drop to the neutral territory of the bedspread, he wished that it would stop and go back to normal.

There was a pull in the fabric. A loose thread that had bunched up at some point during the night and gotten caught underneath Felix's fingernail as he absently scratched his fingertips over the material. Focusing on it, he scratched a little harder, torn between the impulse to try to smooth it back down into the fabric and the more destructive urge to tug on it and watch everything unravel.

"You said you wanted help," he muttered, grimacing slightly as the present and the future got tangled up again. "The other—Before. In the future. To go back to who you'd been." _And you'd never fucking ask me for that help. You'd ask Wash and the goddamn sims, but it would never occur to you to ask me._ Anger burned through the awkward discomfort and prodded him into lifting his eyes to spear Locus with his fierce gaze. It should've been an offer, but it came out like an accusation. "No one knows you better than me."

Locus looked... surprised? Taken aback? Nonplussed? There was some unreadable nuance to his expression that Felix couldn't get to translate into anything he could understand. "You want to help me."

Was that a question or a statement? He couldn't tell. And because he didn't know what it was, he didn't know how to answer it. _Yes? Why are you such a fucking asshole? What the hell do you think I just said? Why are you like this?_ Defining the tone behind the words was important; there were too many ways Felix could respond to it, otherwise.

He didn’t say anything, hoping the heavy silence would clue Locus into the fact that his maybe-sarcasm wasn’t appreciated. But when that didn’t work and Locus continued to stare at him, presumably waiting for some kind of confirmation, irritation quickly replaced whatever lingering sense of awkwardness was left in him. And swiftly behind that irritation came the prickly anger and bitter jealousy of knowing that once again, _his_ help wasn’t nearly as good or as welcome as whatever it was that Wash might have been able to provide.

“Whatever.” Practically spitting the word, Felix shoved himself off the bed and onto his feet. Without sparing another glance at Locus, he quickly made his way to the door. “Handle it yourself then.”

"Felix." In the doorway, halfway in the room and halfway out, Felix paused, though he didn't turn to face him. That must have been acknowledgement enough for Locus, because he continued softly, "Thank you."

It was too late to salvage the conversation, if it was even worth the effort in the first place. He probably still wasn't going to be able to sleep when he got back to his quarters, but he was too rankled by Locus' attitude to turn around and try to make nice with him. That peace offering deserved _some_ response, though. Much as he didn't want to give him anything at all.

Shrugging as casually as he could, Felix muttered a dismissive, "Yeah."

Then he was out in the hallway, the door sliding closed behind him. He picked a direction at random and started walking, too restless and disquiet to consider heading back to bed. It was going to be an even longer night than he'd anticipated.

* * *

Hours later, carrying an ugly mug filled with the strongest—and unfortunately also the most disgusting—instant coffee he could find, Felix dragged himself onto the bridge in order to be present when it exited slipspace. He'd taken a shower, changed his clothes, and wolfed down some processed slab of protein and nutrients as fast as possible to prevent the taste of it from having the chance to register on his tongue. He was still out of sorts and tired from his sleepless night, but he no longer felt like he'd come out on the wrong side of an encounter with a drunk private driving a warthog.

Unsurprisingly, Locus was already there. Felix saw him as soon as he stepped out of the corridor, sitting at the comms station and fussing with something on the largest screen. He was too far away to see what it was, but knowing Locus, it was related to the bullshit mission. And because Felix had every intention of phoning his part of it in, he didn't care enough to be curious about it.

He did, however, make a detour around the center display console so that his path toward the controls took him alongside the comms station. As he passed by, he nonchalantly dropped a folded piece of paper onto Locus' keyboard. "Here."

Behind him, the clicking of the keys subsided into silence. "What is this?"

_Open it and find out_ , he wanted to snap, but in the interest of maintaining the peace he assumed Locus had been trying to forge last night, he called back, "A list of things you used to like before you quit having a personality."

Fetching up alongside the navigational array, Felix deposited himself in the chair and glowered down into the coffee-flavored sludge. It was suffer through drinking it or try to take a nap in the miserably uncomfortable chair in the quarter hour left before the ship entered normal space. As he dithered over making the choice, he heard the slight crinkle as Locus unfolded the paper. Casually, Felix tipped his head back against the headrest and watched him from the corner of his eyes.

Locus was frowning at the paper, and a minute later, as he began reading off the items, Felix could hear it in his voice. " _Guns. Clothes. Food. Me._ " He looked at it for a little longer, then lifted his eyes to Felix. "That's it?"

No longer pretending not to be looking at him, Felix met his eyes and shrugged. "It's not my fault you were boring as fuck."

He looked back at the paper, almost as if he expected more to have appeared while his attention had been elsewhere. Somehow, his expression grew even more doubtful. "You're sure this is accurate?"

_You're such a fucking asshole._ Felix snapped his fingers. "Oh, you know what? I forgot the most important thing." When Locus looked at him expectantly, Felix pointed at him and gave him his largest, smuggest smile. "Table-dancing at the clubs."

"I never—"

" _Right_ ," Felix interrupted, clicking his tongue in mock apology. "Sorry. I got old you confused with newest you."

"That will never happen." It almost sounded like a firm, inarguable statement of fact too.

Instead of confirming that it was all bullshit, Felix just smiled beatifically back at him, refusing to give him the peace of mind. "Guess you'll find out in four years, huh?"

* * *

They arrived at Venezia without difficulty and as soon as they were in orbit, Locus put in a call to Nor Fel. Trade negotiations were typically Felix's department, especially when the Kig-Yar were involved, but Fel was T'vaoan and despite his best efforts to pretend Reach had never happened and therefore had no impact on him personally, Felix still got a little squirrelly around T'vaoans. The last thing they needed was for him to piss her off or worse, accidentally kill her. And if they wanted a substantial upgrade from the beater they'd been flying, they needed to talk to Nor Fel.

As soon as the meeting was set up, they went planet-side and spent the day familiarizing themselves with the changes that had come to New Tyne since the last time they'd paid it a visit. Along the way, they acquired lodgings at an upscale hotel where no one would ask questions, a few changes of clothes, and the start of an arsenal to replace what they'd left on Chorus. When night fell, they put on the expensive suits they'd just purchased and headed out to the exclusive club where Fel held court.

Felix hung back and let Locus do most of the talking, while his fingers itched for the knife tucked in against the small of his back. It didn't help that Fel flirted with his partner through the entire exchange, making the mounting desire to bury the blade in her bright yellow eye less about misguided, ultimately futile retribution for the glassing of his planet and more about sending the message that _no one_ could so much as look sideways at Locus without losing their life. Locus must have felt him glaring bloody murder into the back of his head, because by the time the deal was done, they hadn't just acquired a heavily modified _Razor_ -class prowler but a full armament for each of them, some high-tech computer equipment, and a shipment of luxury cargo large enough to keep them in fresh produce for a considerable length of time. 

"This is blackmail," Felix said, feigning offense, as he caught the pear Locus had just tossed his way. Then, because visual aids were sometimes necessary when he was trying to make salient points like this one, he waved his hand around.

It was late the next day, after Fel had made good on the deal and had delivered the cargo and the passcodes for the new ship. They were in their hotel room, Locus sitting at the desk like it was a proper day at the office and Felix sprawled across the bed with a laptop balanced on his knees, checking for kinks in their network and searching for intel on their target. At least, that was what Locus was doing. Felix had gotten distracted by a whim and was currently hunting down a rare Sangheili ceremonial dagger on a far from reputable network of black market dealers. 

"Reward," Locus corrected him mildly, without glancing up from whatever boring bullshit he was reviewing. 

Felix frowned at the back of his head. "Reward for what?"

"Not killing our contact."

About to bite into the pear, Felix paused, considered the implications of what he was hearing, and decided that an offended glare was more appropriate than opportunistic glee. "Seriously? _That's_ your strategy here? You think you can train me like a fucking pet?" 

Sighing, Locus turned slightly in the chair to look at him. "What are you talking about?"

He hadn't had a pear in literal years. His mouth was practically watering to eat it, but goddamn, he also wanted to lob it at Locus' big head. "You're _rewarding_ me for not killing people now?"

"I'm rewarding you for not overreacting to Fel's behavior," Locus told him patiently, lifting his eyebrows as he waited for that to sink in. When Felix didn't immediately contest his explanation, he turned his attention back to the computer. "I knew it was bothering you."

Not sure how he wanted to interpret that, Felix took a defiant bite out of the fruit. It was as fresh as advertised; the flesh was firm without being hard and the juice so sweet and crisp that it took him back to that one time on New Carthage when he'd gotten a dozen of the things and had drizzled the juice all over— Clearing his throat, Felix jerked himself out of the memory before it could get going and tried to remember what he'd been doing before he'd gotten distracted.

"Look," he paused to lick the pear juice off his lips and wipe away a drop that was making a break for freedom down his chin. "She was _all_ over—"

"I wasn't interested," Locus cut him off absently, obviously not paying the matter the serious attention it was due. "And you made it out of the meeting without making a mess."

Eyeing the back of Locus' head with extreme suspicion, Felix went back to eating the pear. It was easier than trying to figure out what to make of this clumsily diplomatic Locus. By the time he was halfway through it, he'd settled on an opinion that he felt compelled to share. "I don't think I like this." 

Locus could not have sounded more disinterested than he did when he asked, "What?"

"This—This thing you're doing." He waved the half-eaten pear in Locus' direction, trying to encompass the whole vaguely thoughtful, mildly considerate scam he was trying to pull. "It's weird and I don't like it and—Are you even listening to me?"

When Locus didn't immediately respond to the rhetorical question, Felix knew for certain that he'd stopped paying attention to him somewhere in the middle of their conversation. It was both irritating and strangely comforting, because as rude as it was to so blatantly stop listening to him, it was also behavior that Felix was extremely familiar with and likely meant that the thoughtful gift-giving weirdo had disappeared back into the incomprehensible philanthropic ether from which he'd emerged.

Groping blindly at the nightstand with his free hand, Felix's fingers found a pen and without sparing the impulse a second thought, he winged it at the back of Locus' head. Broadside, so that it wouldn't accidentally sever his spinal cord or crack his skull when it hit him. And hit him it did, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn't paying attention to anything but the damn computer.

Visibly startled, Locus—fucking _Locus_ —flinched away and spun around, half rising from the chair like he was anticipating further attack. Felix was so caught up in a wash of mixed feelings about the whole episode that he hefted the remains of the pear warningly.

" _Pay attention to me_ ," he hissed as Locus opened his mouth, no doubt to demand to know what the hell he was doing.

Something that looked suspiciously like embarrassment passed quickly over Locus' face as his expression shifted from startled to exasperated. He slowly sunk back down onto the chair. "What do you want?"

Well, now he couldn't remember. Undeterred by the noticeable lack of a ready answer, Felix took another bite out of the pear and mumbled through the mouthful, "What are you doing?"

It looked like Locus was counting to ten. When it continued to look like he was counting, Felix amended that assessment to include the possibility that he was doing it in a couple different languages. And because Locus knew too many languages for his own good, he raised his eyebrows in impatience. "Well?"

"I was trying to find something."

Now it was Felix's turn to count to ten. "If you make me drag the details out of you one at a time, so help me..."

"Stopping Alvaro isn't enough. We need to find his supplier."

Felix looked at him blankly, waiting for the rest of it. When it wasn't forthcoming, he prompted, "Why?"

"The weapon came from somewhere. It's possible there are more. Maybe the supplier gives it to someone else. If the goal is proliferation, trusting it to one mid-level arms manufacturer is foolish. The probability of failure is too high." 

_You've got to be fucking kidding me._ Even as he thought it, Felix knew that wasn't the case. Locus was too methodical, and once he set his heart on a mission, he wasn't going to let it go until he'd ensured that it was a success from every possible angle. Never mind that there was a whole fucking galaxy out there to search, two of them, an unknown number of targets, and a weapon of equally unknown origin and make.

"Do you have _any_ idea how impossible that's going to be?" It was a futile effort and Felix knew it, but what Locus was proposing was beyond unreasonable. "We don't know who's responsible. We don't know when contact was made with Alvaro. We don't even know what the damn thing looks like or where it came from!"

Locus shook his head. "We have clues."

"Clues?" Felix laughed, the sound a little too high. " _Clues?_ Are you kidding me?" On the one hand, it was pretty complimentary, the amount of trust Locus was putting into his recollection of information from the future. But on the other, more honest hand, Felix knew he wasn't a reliable source and if the entire mission hinged on what he knew, they were going to fail spectacularly. "Do you really think I sat there like a good little soldier and memorized everything? I was barely paying attention!"

"You know enough," Locus insisted stubbornly.

"Not for what you're proposing!" Groaning, Felix scrubbed his empty hand over his face. There had to be a logical argument he could make that would convince Locus that this was a stupid fucking plan. "We could spend the rest of our lives trying to hunt these bastards down and we might never find them."

Appealing to logic wasn't working. The determined set of Locus' face didn't soften even a little. "We'll find them."

It was always amazing—and extraordinarily offensive—what Locus chose to put faith behind when it came to him. He could warn him about the dangers of something until he was blue in the face and Locus would ignore everything he said up to and including the moment when it all went to shit and they were fighting for their lives. Spending virtually a lifetime guarding his back and risking his own life to protect him never quite resulted in Locus actually believing that he wouldn't sell him out for the right price. But as soon as a bunch of useless assholes who didn't matter were on the line, suddenly every asinine thing Felix said regarding something he knew practically nothing about was so worthy of serious consideration that Locus could build a whole _plan_ around it.

Disgusted, Felix shook his head and looked down at his laptop screen, needing something that wasn't Locus' face to focus on. If this was what Locus was going to make of the rest of their lives, some unending search through the galaxy that would ultimately net them nothing, maybe it would've been better to stay on Chorus. He would've been going into it with forewarning about Locus' treachery and—fuck, it pained him to even think this—the danger Tucker posed. He could've gotten out of it somehow. He could've survived.

And a lifetime spent hunting down the sims would've been preferable to what Locus was trying to create for them. At least at the end of _that_ life, there was vengeance and satisfaction. There wasn't an end to this one except failure and frustration.

"You mentioned New Phoenix in connection to the weapon," Locus said into the silence. "I was looking into what happened there and I think that's where we ought to start."

That made Felix lift his head. "That's Earth."

"I know."

"You want to go to _Earth_?" The day was just getting better and better. _Should've known the pears were a trap._

"If the weapon is similar to what was used against the city, there's a chance that someone in the area can tell us more than what's been provided in the official reports." Which, from Locus' perspective, was no doubt very reasonable and logical and all those other things that Felix wasn't.

But Locus wasn't really the epitome of being in touch with the universe and the people who inhabited it. Neither was Felix, honestly, but he was _closer_ and that proximity afforded him a clearer view. "Drunk rambling, conspiracy theories, anti-peace instigators," he ticked them off on his fingers. "Yeah, this is going to be _real_ helpful. Might as well put in a call to Naval Intelligence and ask to see their files while you're at it."

He'd looked up the New Phoenix incident once, in the middle of his crash course in recent history while he'd been hiding out in that motel on Gilgamesh, and he hadn't found anything useful. Four years after the fact and ONI hadn't declassified any of the intel they'd compiled on the attack. And because he hadn't given a damn beyond mild curiosity, he hadn't gone digging for anything beyond what the media had reported. Sure, the disaster would be fresh in the minds of the yokels who hadn't been killed, but so would be the useless speculation and the rampant misinformation-mongering. They probably _would_ have better luck trying to hack ONI's database.

_Only the most technologically advanced organization in the whole of human civilization. How hard can it be to get into their network?_ Objectively, Felix knew that it was impossible. But daydreaming about what it might take to accomplish it was more interesting than listening to Locus try to convince him that his dumbass idea was a good one.

It wouldn't be possible to do it remotely. They'd have to physically enter an ONI facility, likely one of the most heavily fortified ones, and physically access the system there. Security would be insane: armed guards, unpredictable staggered shift rotations, automated assault systems, AI-monitored hubs. They would need ONI-grade tech just to break into the damn place. _Shame I couldn't have brought that face-changer and the cloaking device with me back to the past. That would've made things a lot easier._ Not simply ONI tech, but _futuristic_ ONI tech. Possibly not even an idea in anyone's mind yet. The bastards would never expect it.

He was in the middle of a particularly violent fantasy about carving a path through an army of highly trained ONI operatives when the obvious finally came crashing down on him. In the future, Locus had been supplied with expensive as hell ONI tech—the face-changer, the cloaking device, that experimental alternative to biofoam—from an ONI agent who'd also been passing along information about Alvaro and his operation. _ONI was already involved._ At the very least, there was one person in the organization who knew what was going on and was trying to stop it. And somewhere along the line, the spook had come into contact with Locus and built up enough of a rapport with him that he'd taken the provided intel at face value, with none of the paranoid, mistrustful suspicion to which he treated everything else in the fucking universe. He'd never gotten identification and yet he'd still acted on the information, still put his life, Felix's life, and precious Wash's life on the line for it.

_Someone_ knew Locus too fucking well for Felix's comfort, but the question was, who did the spook know? The mercenary? Or the mercenary _and_ the UNSC marine? If it was just the mercenary, that was bad enough. But as far as the UNSC and the rest of humanity was concerned, Sam Ortez and Isaac Gates were dead and the all people who'd ever known them were dead too, victims of the war or time or misfortune. So it wasn't like anyone would just be able to connect a few random dots right on back to a pair of equally random KIA files that were housed with billions of other files just like them.

A prickling sense of uneasy disquiet crept over him, raising gooseflesh on his arms and the back of his neck. In the future, he'd begun to wonder if Locus had gotten caught up in something much larger than he'd realized, but he hadn't had the time to look into it. But now, caught in the grip of the uncomfortable feeling that they were being watched, that some unknown party knew who they were well enough to manipulate Locus and sneak past his guard, Felix had that opportunity. He could get to the bottom of it _before_ some piece of shit government spook cozied up to Locus and got them both killed.

_I'm going to find you, motherfucker, and when I do, I'm going to make you wish you'd never seen his name_. Because hacking an impenetrable system was far beyond Felix's capabilities, but ferreting out a threat to Locus and making a bloody smear of that threat across half a quadrant in warning to anyone else stupid enough to try to mess with what belonged to him was simplicity itself.

_Alvaro. New Phoenix. Mass-produced extinction weapons. The Purge. Some alien race that wasn't part of the Covenant._ It wasn't much, but it was enough for Felix to scatter like breadcrumbs across all the back channels and dark places that spooks liked to haunt. He would lead the bastard right to him and his brand new collection of knives.

" _Felix_ ," Locus said sharply, jerking him out of the malevolent current of his thoughts.

Fingers freezing over the top of the laptop's keyboard, Felix focused on him. Somewhere along the line, he'd set the remains of the pear on the nightstand, though he had no recollection of doing it. "What?" he snapped, waspishly.

Disapproval was practically etched across Locus' face. "You weren't listening to a thing I said."

"No," Felix agreed shortly, dismissing him and the conversation by looking back to the laptop. He would start with one of the sites that the Insurrectionists were known to frequent and draw the trail out from there. "I wasn't."

The silence was so heavy that he knew Locus was glaring at him, but for once, he hardly cared that he was disappointing the asshole. He had more important things to worry about. Before he could refocus his attention, however, the tension in the atmosphere shifted and Locus asked quietly, "What is it?"

His tone was unexpected enough that Felix lifted his head to look at him. He was studying him, interest clear on his face. "I don't know." Locus started to frown and Felix held up his hand. "I just want to make sure that it _is_ something before I bother you with it, all right? You're already handling this other shit. Let me deal with this. I'll let you know if I find anything."

An argument was the least of what he was expecting to get in response to trying to get Locus to let a portion of a sacred mission in his hands. But Locus didn't demand that he tell him what he meant or what he was doing. He just nodded and went back to his computer. Felix stared after him a moment, startled by the show of confidence, before he too bent his head and got to work.

* * *

Of all the places Felix had never wanted to visit, Earth was among the top ten. Maybe even the top five. Not because there was anything actually wrong with the planet itself, but because it was fucking _Earth_. The birthplace of humanity. The headquarters of every organization, corporation, and company worth a damn. The center of law and order. And because of all that, the most boring, carefully ordered, law-abiding planet in the whole galaxy.

Which probably made it paradise to Locus.

"Let's make this quick," Felix told him as his boots hit the soil of his ancestral homeworld for the first time. He grimaced a little, resisting the urge to shake the dirt off. It wasn't going to help. They had a whole _afternoon_ of trudging around ahead of them. "Before I get arrested for corrupting the air of this shithole."

Locus paused as he stepped down off the shuttle onto the ground, because of course he fucking did. _Probably communing with the spirits of all the upstanding citizens who've come before him._ Felix eyed him, waiting for some sign of sentimental bullshit to pass over his face or for the atmosphere of peace and love and following the law to sink into his skin and turn him into a even more insufferably condensed self-righteous version of himself. Nothing happened that he could see, but when Locus glanced his way, he bristled in preemptive irritation.

"You aren't going to get arrested." And damned if he didn't actually sound patient instead of exhausted.

Suppressing a shudder of revulsion, Felix started walking. The sooner they got the asinine investigation over with, the sooner they could get the hell out of there. The last thing he needed was for Locus to spontaneously decide that he needed to retire and set up a soup kitchen. That would be worse than chasing dead ends around the galaxy.

Technically, they weren't supposed to be in New Phoenix. The area was still under quarantine and trespassing on the eerily empty streets was punishable by arrest if they were caught. But as they learned after a few hours spent carefully keeping themselves concealed, the city was completely deserted. The opportunistic scavengers that would have snuck through the quarantine to loot an abandoned city in the colonies were strangely absent here. No guards patrolled the city or its limits. There weren't even any animals anywhere.

They entered only a few homes and businesses and each time, they found everything where the owners had left it. Valuables were sitting out in the open, unsecured and evidently not at risk for theft. Storefronts remained undamaged, the goods within untouched. Like the place was cursed and no one dared disturb anything about it.

Eventually, temptation got the better of him and Felix suggested that they load up on supplies while they were there, but Locus shot that down with a forbidding scowl and a very curt order to keep his hands to himself. He tried to appeal to logic by pointing out that no one was going to use any of it and it was just going to waste sitting around, hoping that Locus' abhorrence of waste would kick in and they could have a little fun looting the more expensive establishments. Unfortunately, Locus was apparently caught in the throes of some kind of morality crisis and wouldn't even consider it.

For hours, they poked around the city, searching for clues. By nightfall, they hadn't found a damn thing. No sign of life. No traces of the weapon that had been used. And Locus refused every suggestion Felix made to loosen the fuck up a little and have some fun.

When it became painfully obvious that they weren't going to find anything even if they searched the length and breadth of the place and that further exploration was just a waste of time, they trooped back to the last place they’d parked the shuttle and flew to the nearest occupied town. It was a large, sprawling suburb of the city, full of boring residential neighborhoods clustered around various points of entertainment and business. Because there was nothing inconspicuous about landing a shuttle in the middle of a motel parking lot, they had to find somewhere to leave it that wouldn't be discovered. After twenty minutes of cruising around the airspace above the outskirts of the suburbs, they finally found a stretch of scrubby looking desert and a ravine in which to hide the thing.

And _that_ meant some interminable too-many-kilometers walk back to civilization, because hitchhiking was out of the question if they didn't want to stand out and Locus wouldn't let Felix flag someone down for the purpose of killing the driver and stealing the car.

"I fucking hate Earth," Felix grumbled irritably.

They could’ve taken a car from the city. It wasn’t like there was anyone left alive to use it, but Locus had vetoed that idea too. Although he claimed to be concerned about the infinitesimal possibility that someone might recognize whatever car they stole, Felix didn’t believe him and assumed that he was just being a sadistic bastard.

By the time they reached their destination, a little more than two hours later, Felix was thirsty, his shoulder was aching under the weight of the travel bag he was hauling, and his feet hurt. So when Locus pointed to a sketchy looking motel along the side of the road, Felix just nodded in resigned acceptance, his desire to sit down outweighing his visceral disgust at the place. They checked in with a bored-looking clerk who barely looked up from the computer he was messing around with and retired to a dingy room with hideous algae-green carpet, bland white walls, and furniture that looked like it hadn't been updated since the twenty-fourth century. It also smelled like a peculiar mixture of old sweat, mold, and dust.

Worst of all, there was only one bed.

In no version of reality should the prospect of sharing a bed with Locus have filled Felix with uncomfortable dread, yet as he caught sight of the thing, that was precisely what he felt. It had been such a long fucking time and he was only human. There were some pretty severe limits to his barely-there restraint and this was like the mother lode of temptation, virtually begging him to cast it to the wind.

Felix dumped the bag on the floor just inside the door, coolly informed Locus that he expected to see a bottle of water waiting for him on the rickety table when he got out of the shower, and marched into the bathroom. It was as depressing as the rest of the room: bland, beige, and barely large enough for the toilet, sink, and shower stall that occupied it. Threadbare towels hung limply from a towel bar near the shower, the light from the one bare bulb was weak and sickly, and the mold smell was stronger, but Felix ignored it as he shucked off his dirty clothes and got into the shower. They'd stayed in worst places before and they probably would again.

The water pressure was mediocre at best, better than the facilities at the New Republic's base but significantly worse than what had been available on their new ship. It was clean, though, which was what mattered to him the most and the hot water held out for a solid fifteen minutes before it started to cool off. He endured the cold for a few minutes, enjoying the way it felt to be clean more than he minded the temperature, then climbed out and reluctantly dried off, hoping the towel wasn't too filthy.

Locus had apparently heeded his demand for a drink, because there were a few water bottles sitting on the table, fresh out of the old vending machine they'd passed on the way to the room and lightly condensing on the table. Felix ignored his thirst for the moment, emerging from the bathroom only long enough to grab his toiletry bag. Then it was back inside to bang his elbows on the wall and curse his way through shaving his face and brushing his teeth.

Once he felt marginally human again, he walked back into the main room and went rummaging through his bag for clean clothes. Locus took his place in the bathroom without a word, leaving Felix to get dressed, gulp down an entire bottle of water, and get settled on the bed with his laptop in peace. Tired as he was, he wanted to check his traps first, and sure enough, the first two had been sprung. Someone claiming to be in possession of potentially interesting information was making very nonchalant inquiries into whether anyone would be willing to pay for it. Which might have been legitimate, but Felix was disinclined to believe that a genuine peddler of information would have taken the bait so quickly.

On the off-chance it wasn't a spook, he obliquely responded in a way that would encourage a further sharing of information before anything else could be set in motion. If it was the spook, he'd set up a meeting and catch the bastard. If it wasn't and there was someone out there with information, he'd get it and pass it along to Locus. Maybe it would help, maybe it wouldn't, but Locus wouldn't be able to accuse him of not pulling his weight on the idiotic job.

The bathroom door opened as he was typing out the last reply and out of habit, he glanced up over the top of the laptop. Locus stepped into the room, clean shaven and his wet hair meticulously combed, in nothing but one of the towels wrapped loosely around his hips. He didn't so much as glance in Felix's direction as he went to get clothes of his own, so Felix felt no compunction about watching him do it.

A few water droplets dripped off the end of his hair and started working their way down his back. Their movement drew Felix's gaze and he watched them snake over muscle and scar tissue and along the channel of his spine until their journey ended in cheap, flimsy cotton. Cheap, flimsy cotton that was _really_ thin, Felix realized, as Locus bent over to retrieve his bag and he spent a handful of breaths with his eyes glued to his ass. But regrettably, that majestic vista wasn’t meant to last.

Locus straightened, turned around, and met Felix's eyes. _Busted!_ Except, instead of jerking his eyes away and pretending that he hadn't been ogling him, Felix just gave him a sly, predatory smirk.

"You're predictable," Locus muttered, rolling his eyes to demonstrate how unimpressed he was.

"And you're showing off," Felix retorted, unabashed. "Don't put on a show if you don't want an audience."

Snorting, Locus threw the towel at him and set about getting dressed with all the perfunctory interest in the task that he’d displayed back when they’d been soldiers for the UNSC. There was nothing suggestive or seductive about it. Felix batted the towel out of the way before it struck him in the face, shamelessly staring until his old enemy sweatpants swept onto the scene and stole the view. 

_I remember something else you used to like._ The words were right there on his tongue, eager to be spoken in a silky tone so suggestive that even at his most willfully dense, Locus would be sure to know that he was talking about sex, not high quality linens or expensive underwear. But try though he might to voice them, he couldn't quite get his throat to cooperate.

At this point in his life, flirting with Locus was second nature, as automatic and thoughtless as breathing, and just because he'd set out on some idiotic mission to become an emotionless void hadn't meant that Felix had stopped doing it. He just didn't do it as often as he used to, and the offers were never quite as serious as they once were. Not that Felix would have refused if Locus had ever taken him up on any of them, of course not, but something alien and unpleasant would twist his stomach into knots if he thought about it too seriously for too long.

And now, things were different once again. They were stranded in a strange demilitarized zone between who they'd been in the distant past and who they'd become. But it wasn't enough to provoke him into making the offer. Or maybe it was too much. Felix didn't know. He didn't want to think about it, either. If he did, he'd start comparing the Locus that he had now with both of the ones that he'd lost. And the few times he'd mistakenly tried to do shit like that, he felt... irritable. Angry. Oddly raw, like he was scratching at an open wound.

If he said it, if he made the offer and Locus brushed him off, or worse, mocked him for it, he didn't know how he'd react. He just knew that it wouldn't be good. And although things weren't _right_ with them, they weren't as wrong as they had been on Chorus. He didn't know if they could manage to go forward, but he sure as fuck didn't want to go backward.

So he swallowed the words down, told himself that looking was plenty, more than enough. In a way, it was. It was a hell of a lot more than he'd gotten for years. Especially those that they'd spent apart, fostering a war that had ultimately amounted to nothing.   
  
"Are you actually working?" Locus asked, seemingly oblivious to the internal tumult currently occupying the bulk of Felix's attention. He sounded to be in the grip of disbelief.

Felix blinked, inadvertently discovering that his eyes were dry from too much blank staring, and glanced over. Locus was in the midst of fighting the unsightly comforter and sheets loose from where they'd been tucked under the mattress by some undoubtedly disagreeable housekeeper.

"You're actually going to sleep under there?" he shot back, lifting his eyebrows. "You don't know what's living in there."

"We've slept in worse," Locus returned blandly, as, battle won, he yanked the whole mess back and climbed into bed. 

Recognizing that he wasn't going to be able to get anything else done with Locus breathing down his neck and nosing around in his business, Felix quickly finished up his reply, hit _send_ , and powered off the laptop. He closed it, set it on the worn nightstand beside him, and glanced askance at Locus, suddenly bereft of anything to do with his hands.

Locus could be extraordinarily contrary when he wanted to be, fussier and more demanding of high quality, expensive things than Felix one minute and utterly disinterested and uncaring about slumming it the next. Generally, his tastes coincided with whether they were on a job or not, but this was hardly an actual _job_. They would need to get paid for that, and as far as Felix knew, they most certainly were not.

But Locus was laying there on his side, gross sheets pulled up to his shoulders and head calmly resting on a pillow that was probably infested with lice, as if he hadn't a care in the galaxy and no standards to speak of. Felix eyed the back of his head disapprovingly for a moment, then sniffed and reached over to turn the light off. The room didn't get better once he couldn't see it, and after his eyes adjusted to the darkness, there was enough ambient light sneaking in around the edges of the curtains that shadowy shapes and dull, greyish-blue colors started infringing on his temporarily blissful blindness.

"You're going to be cold," Locus murmured, breaking the silence with what ostensibly sounded like an unsolicited opinion but Felix knew to be a warning. His tone was a little too smugly knowing to be anything else.

Unwilling to concede the point, Felix threw himself down onto his side of the bed and turned his back on him with a huff. "Better cold than infested with bugs."

A low, barely audible snort was the only response he got. And before he could come up with something suitably scathing, exhaustion caught up with him and he was fast asleep.

* * *

Felix woke to a vague, slightly congested pressure in his sinuses, sweat trickling down his back, and something that was simultaneously fluttery and pokey tickling his nose. Snorting it away, he cracked open an eye and saw a somewhat blurry blob of black ringed by hazy light. Beyond it, what looked to be truly hideous paisley curtains lurked in the distance. He took a slow, sleepy breath, only to regret it as the obnoxious thing immediately returned to bothering his nose. This time it tickled more than it poked, causing him to sneeze so hard that he set off an earthquake, which jostled him fully into consciousness.

"Are you done?" came Locus' dry voice, effectively clearing out the rest of the sleep-addled confusion from his brain.  
  
_Oh, fuck me._ He was gripped by the sudden, irrational impulse to lie very still, as if by not moving, he could trick reality into being something other than what it was. Which, he knew, was Caboose-level stupidity and in the interest of not being a complete fucking idiot, he refused to acknowledge it. Because whether he opened his eyes properly and looked or shifted back into his own space, Felix could _feel_ the truth of it: he was pressed tightly against the length of Locus' body.  
  
His chest was practically flat against Locus' back. The tops of his thighs were pressed in against the backs of Locus'. The fluttery, tickly thing poking at his nose with his every inhalation was Locus' hair: Felix had his face all but buried in it, his cheek flush against the nape of his neck. Very carefully, he kept his mind on the mortification of being so pathetically weak that he couldn't trust himself not to spoon up against Locus the second he was unconscious and far away from the fact that Locus' perfect ass was firm against his groin, with only a few thin layers of fabric separating it from his dick.  
  
If he acknowledged it, he was going to get hard. If he got hard, Locus would feel it. And if Locus felt it, he would know that no matter how inexcusable his actions were—abandoning him, getting obsessed with Wash, being attracted to Wash, fucking Wash, turning into a humanitarian, getting him killed repeatedly—none of it would ever be abhorrent enough to make Felix stop wanting him. That knowledge would be a weapon Locus could use against him whenever he saw fit, a noose around his neck used to strangle him until he was brought to heel.  
  
Better just to drown in the mortification of his position, burrowed under the goddamn covers and as close to Locus as he could get without being on top of him, and the unavoidable fact that last night's prediction had come true. He obviously _had_ gotten cold while asleep and sought to remedy it the most expedient way possible: lots of layers and leeching Locus' body heat.   
  
"Your damn hair is suffocating me," Felix growled, finding it infinitely easier to pin the blame for his unconscious transgressions on Locus than cop to any of it himself. "Maybe try keeping it to your side of the bed next time, huh?"

Locus didn’t need to tell him to turn around. Like it was a living thing staring at the back of his head, Felix could feel the vast, empty expanse of the rest of the bed stretching out behind him. And although he couldn’t see Locus’ face from where he was laying, he could feel the weight of his smug judgment like a thick, stifling blanket.

The only recourse left to Felix was to turn it all back on him. "Why are you still in here, anyway?" Locus barely slept past dawn on a normal day. It took injury, illness, or an _extremely_ late night for the sun to rise before him. He certainly never lazed around in bed after waking like Felix did. "Getting too lazy in your old age to get out of bed?"

"I tried," Locus replied, his voice still dry as dust. Was it Felix's imagination or was there a hint of amusement in there too? With only two words to work with, he couldn't be sure.

And then, to his abject horror, he felt a finger tap pointedly against his forearm.

Like he'd just been burned, Felix jerked backward, yanking his arm away from Locus' hand—and more importantly, his waist—and retreating to the other side of the bed. He'd been so focused on not being aware of his body that he hadn't even realized he'd been hanging onto him. _Fuck._ He almost said it out loud, too, but when he opened his mouth to do it, he found that his throat was too tight to work properly.

Seemingly unperturbed by the whole debacle, Locus threw back the covers and got up. Felix watched him with wary tension as he moved around the end of the bed, scratching absently at the back of his neck. He knew that Felix was watching him, he was much too aware of his surroundings not to feel the weight of his gaze, but Locus ignored him like he wasn't there, like he hadn't woken up to Felix plastered against his back like piece of cling wrap or his arm like a shackle around him. Like it was just another ordinary morning and not the first such morning in veritable years.

Even stranger, he didn't bother to pat down the wild chaos of his hair, which was firmly languishing in that awkward stage where it wasn't exactly short anymore but had yet to get long enough to lie down on its own.

Felix was still staring at him, growing gradually more bewildered, as he disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door without a single disgusted, disappointed, or disapproving glance. _What the fuck just happened?_ Because _something_ had happened. He'd unintentionally thrown the door wide open for Locus to mock, complain about, or disparage him and he hadn't done any of it. He hadn't even looked annoyed that Felix had disrupted his sleep.

It was so unlike him, so unlike the man that Locus had become after— _after_ that Felix didn't know how to interpret it or what to do about it. Was he supposed to acknowledge it and reinforce what Locus was trying to do? Was he supposed to ignore it so that Locus didn't get self-conscious and discouraged? What did Locus want him to do? What was helpful? What would _Wash_ do?

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he recoiled from it in revulsion. It was bad enough that the fucker was still alive. But to actually try to figure out what he would do in conjunction with Locus was—was...there wasn't a word for it that properly encompassed his utter rejection of the notion. Odious, abominable, despicable, reprehensible—they were all too weak, too toothless.

Besides, Felix already knew what Wash would do. Wash would evidently just fuck him and his magical dick would make all of Locus' problems go away. And Wash's dick, along with Wash using that dick anywhere near Locus, was the _last_ thing Felix wanted to think about. Ever.

Groaning, he yanked the pillow out from under his head and hauled it over his face. The morning was off to a bad start. He had no hope that the rest of the day would be any better.

A few minutes later, the click of the latch heralded the arrival of Locus back into the room. Very carefully, Felix shifted the corner of the pillow back from the eye nearest the bathroom so that he could get a look at him. His hair had been tamed, his scar was concealed, and his face was composed into an alert, albeit pleasantly neutral, expression. It lasted for a whole five seconds, too. Right up until he noticed that Felix was still in bed.

Cocking a hip to lean against the doorframe, Locus folded his arms over his chest and frowned. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to suffocate myself," Felix replied easily, his voice muffled by the pillow.

Like he was inside Locus' head listening to his thoughts, Felix recognized the precise moment he decided that he didn't care enough to ask for an explanation. "Get up. We have a lot of ground to cover today."

He wasn't wrong. They were out of the motel in half an hour, dressed in jeans and t-shirts like ordinary people. The air was warm, though not intolerably so. According to Locus' online reconnaissance, it was autumn in this part of the world and although temperatures might climb up into the 30s in the afternoon, it would cool quickly and be back to the teens by evening.

They picked up a breakfast of coffee and pastries at the convenience store stationed on the corner, about half a block from the motel, and sat down on the low concrete wall edging the parking lot to eat. After they were done, Locus spread a small map of the area out between them and set about coordinating locations of prospective interest with a _public transportation_ schedule, like they were tourists seeing the sights instead of a mercenary and a.... whatever the hell Locus was now.

"I can get us a car in like three minutes," Felix hissed, keeping his voice too low to travel beyond Locus' ears. He pointed a finger at the schedule with something akin to horror. "We don't have to take the _bus_."

Locus shook his head. "No."

They took the fucking bus. For hours, as they traveled to random bars, coffee shops, parks, and anywhere else they could strike up conversations with strangers about the empty city without seeming to be anything but tourists curious about a tragedy, _they took the fucking bus._ By noon, Felix was itching from the noxious miasma of being in close proximity to too many plebs that was slowly contaminating his skin. By evening, his fingers were itching too; itching to slide a knife between Locus' ribs every time he gestured him onto another one of the disgusting things.

It was pushing twenty-one hundred hours when they returned to the motel, carrying bags of takeout and a six-pack of beer. Felix was equal parts hungry, irritable, and filthy, but after kicking off his shoes, the desire to wash off the stench of the bus overrode everything else. With a threat to Locus about not eating all of the food or drinking all the beer while he was gone, he took a quick shower. After washing his hair and scrubbing off the worst of the grime, real and imaginary, he put on a pair of sweatpants and rejoined him.

Both food and drink were untouched. Locus was sitting on the bed, propped up against the headboard with his laptop on his thighs, embroiled in something there on the screen. Probably typing out his thoughts on the day or making charts, Felix assumed, as he let him know that the shower was free. When he received no acknowledgement, he gave Locus' shoulder a none too subtle shove on his way to the table.

"Shower, food, _then_ work," Felix told him firmly as he rifled through the bags. "Those are the rules."

A faint snort drifted over from Locus' direction. "What rules?" But the light tap of the laptop closing followed it.

It wasn't their old banter, but it was almost close enough that Felix paused in his investigation of dinner and shot him a smirk over his shoulder. "The ones that prevent me from belting out show tunes at oh-one-hundred."

Rolling his eyes, Locus got up and retrieved a change of clothes. "You don't know any show tunes."

"Makes making them up even worse, huh?"

Locus' snort was significantly louder than the last one, though he didn't say anything further about it. Just ducked into the bathroom and half a minute later, Felix heard the rush of water from the shower. Marginally positive interaction and cooperation didn't make up for a day of aggravation, but it kept Felix's mood considerably less sour than it had been as he dug the takeout cartons out of the bags and searched through a mound of napkins for the plastic utensils. When Locus came back into the room, the table was as set as it was getting, two bottles were opened, and Felix was lounging in one of the uncomfortable chairs like it was a throne, nursing his way through his beer.

They ate dinner together at the rickety table, Locus absolutely refused to eat on the bed, and dissected what little they'd learned over the course of the day. As Felix had predicted, most of it had been conspiracy theories and fanciful nonsense that was probably going to turn into local legend if it kept being bandied about the way that it had been today. And that made it completely useless for their purposes.

Some guy's neighbor's girlfriend's cousin's hairstylist had seen something that looked like a person made out of fire roaming the empty streets of New Phoenix. It was the end times, the _real_ start of the Apocalypse, and Death rode the desert at night on his charred horse. It was the UNSC that had done it, sacrificing more than six million people for the sake of stirring up support for another war with the remnants of the Covenant. It wasn't aliens at all; it was a pandemic, some misbegotten illness that got out of control and ravaged the city before proper treatment could be provided. Pahana had come as had been foretold and the wicked were being purged in preparation of ushering in the Fifth World. A friend's family member had heard from an acquaintance about a story Raymond's youngest boy had been telling: that he'd gone into the city shortly after a bright flash of light and found nothing but little piles of blue ash everywhere.

It was all bullshit, of course, but in trying to parse through it, there were some clues for anyone savvy enough to recognize them. Because the official story, the one that had been told to the millions of people concerned about the disappearance of friends, family, and associates, was the pandemic nonsense. The UNSC _had_ gotten publicly involved at that point. An ONI agent had been sent to assure the citizenry that the Covenant had had absolutely nothing to do with the disaster and that Earth was _not_ under attack by aliens, known or otherwise.

Which, Felix and Locus were in perfect agreement about, meant that Earth had been attacked by aliens, likely of unknown origin. Nothing embodied that ancient adage about protesting too much to cover up the truth than the government.

After they finished eating, Locus opened the laptop again and pulled up old recordings of the news from that time. All of the reports, they realized after the tenth had concluded, had been done by a Waypoint News Service. Felix didn't know much about how things were done on Earth, but he thought it was really fucking odd that only one news outlet bothered to report on the mass disappearance of the population of one of the largest cities in the United Republic of North America. Conveniently, there were no recordings or pictures taken of the ONI agent. His statement had been covered multiple times, but of the man himself there was no information. No name, no voice, no image.

"Redacted after the initial reports?" Felix mused, somewhere in the middle of his third beer. "Edited out of the archived footage, maybe?" He tipped the mouth of the bottle toward the laptop's screen. "You can't reassure millions of people with no identification. People are gullible morons but they aren't _that_ stupid."

Locus considered it gravely, then nodded. "Tomorrow, we'll ask around about the agent."

"Oh no." Felix shook his head so violently that he almost spilled his beer. "If we're going back out there, I'm getting us a goddamn car."

"Felix—"

" _No._ " He jabbed Locus sharply in the chest as he glared furiously at him. "I did it your way today. We're doing it my way tomorrow."

Lips compressing into a thin line, Locus gave him a constipated look and then, un-fucking-believably, conceded. "No killing to get it."

"Oh my _god_ ," he exclaimed, so irritated that he was tempted to punch him. Or maybe _accidentally_ hit him in the face with the bottle. "I can steal shit without killing everybody to do it. Jesus Christ."

Productivity broke down quickly after that. Felix was offended, Locus didn't particularly care, and having reached an impasse, they retreated with their computers to their own sides of the bed. Locus, no doubt, was working or researching or donating his fortune to some homeless shelter, so Felix studiously ignored him as he perused his virtual traps. _Something_ had transpired on an oft-unused message board, but the digital footprints were difficult to sort out while he was exhausted, gingerly edging toward intoxicated, and put out.

_Tomorrow_ , he told himself, as he powered off the laptop and shoved it over onto the nightstand. _I'll figure it out tomorrow_. At present, he had maintaining suitable distance from his asshole partner while he was asleep to keep him occupied.

In the interest of not giving his unconscious self a reason to seek warmth, he crawled under the sheets and got comfortable. On his side, Locus at his back, and a veritable _sea_ of space between them. _Don't you fucking cross it_ , he told himself sternly. _It's enemy territory. If you cross it, you're just giving him ammunition to use against you and he's got enough of it._

Locus typed on beside him, seemingly oblivious to what he was doing, but he was quiet and after a few minutes, he absently turned off the light beside him. With only the glow from the laptop keeping the darkness at bay and the rhythmic, oddly soothing tap of Locus' fingers on the keys, it wasn't long before alcohol-enhanced weariness pulled Felix down into sleep.

It was _well_ past midnight when Felix woke up, his mouth unpleasantly dry and his throat parched. He licked futilely at his lips a few times, hoping to coax out enough moisture to permit him to go back to sleep without having to get up in search of a drink to slake his thirst, but it wasn't working. With a heavy sigh, he unearthed himself from the covers—still on his side of the bed, the lesson must have been learned—and got up. There _should_ have been water bottles on the table, but when he reached it and silently felt around, all that turned up were empty ones. _Someone_ had evidently been so eager to get to work with what meager amount of information they'd been able to gather that he'd forgotten drink duty.

Felix shot Locus an irritable glance, hoping that all of his moving around would have roused the asshole enough that he could feel justified in making _him_ tramp out to the vending machine at ass o'clock, but the dark, shadowy lump on the bed was silent and unmoving. Possibly a ruse. More than likely, however, it wasn't. Locus' paranoia had never registered him as a threat. He could stand over him with a knife, poised to drive it into his chest, and Locus wouldn't wake up. He'd tried it once, a few years ago, and after an hour of lurking there at the side of the bed, waiting to startle him into wakefulness, he'd given up, chucked the knife into the wall in a moment of pique, and gone to sleep himself.

And the next morning, the son of a bitch had had the audacity to ask him why the hell there was a knife in the wall.

Despite the petty urge to turn the light on—which would wake Locus up—while he hunted for a t-shirt and shoes, Felix managed to locate them in the dark, narrowly avoided banging his foot on the leg of a chair in the process, put the items on, and slipped out of the room with Locus still sleeping on obliviously behind him.

The air was just chilly enough to make the exposed skin on Felix's arms prickle as he headed down the sidewalk toward the little courtyard between the buldings where the vending machine was stationed. With New Phoenix an abandoned shell of its former glory, there wasn't enough ambient light to block out the stars, and when he tipped his head back to look at them, he could see dozens of unfamiliar constellations high above him.

After years spent visiting a multitude of the human colonies, he figured that he ought to have been used to it, but the weird thing was, he wasn't. It was always jarring to glance up and see an alien sky. And for a few seconds, before he got a grip on himself, he always felt disturbing unmoored, like he'd been set adrift in space to float helplessly through it, unable to control his trajectory or do anything more than watch his oxygen run out. He felt it now, an uneasy twisting in his stomach and a further prickling of his skin, before he shook it off and turned the corner.

The courtyard was empty, save for some questionable plastic chairs and an ancient ice maker wheezing against the wall. He stood there for a moment, looking around in baffled confusion, wondering what kind of place this was that someone actually stole the _vending machine_ and was just beginning to reach the conclusion that _maybe_ Earth wasn't quite as boring as he'd assumed, when he realized that he'd turned the wrong damn way when he left the room. _It’s too early for this_ , he thought, rubbing at his face in the hope that it would wake him up a little more. _Fucking Locus. This is all his fault._

Because he was already halfway across the courtyard, Felix reckoned that it would take longer to backtrack and kept going. The motel was laid out like a square, each long building of a dozen rooms detached from the others, and in the center was a large oddly shaped pool that had all the markings of a piss-poor attempt to turn a dumpy place to sleep into an attractive desert oasis. Out of idle curiosity, Felix tried to check it out as he walked past, though there wasn't _quite_ enough light to see it clearly. There were large, lumpy shadows at random places around the pool, larger than what was obviously cheap patio furniture and not related to the more recognizable palm trees and shrubs planted along the pool's edge. Unable to quickly identify the shadows or their purpose, he found himself pausing there on the sidewalk to stare at the things. Like he actually cared about the shitty landscaping of an equally shitty motel.

_Must be drunker than I thought._ Shaking his head, Felix tore himself away from inconclusive view and hurried on to his destination before he could get distracted by anything else. This time, the vending machine was there, humming merrily along with most of its product availability indicators lit up. Felix got a large bottle of water, started to walk away, and then, gripped by an inexplicably thoughtful impulse, turned back and got a second for Locus.

_Probably won't appreciate the effort,_ Felix thought moodily, tucking the extra bottle between his side and his elbow so he could get the cap off of his own. _Never does any other time._ He took a long drink, practically reveling in the way the cold liquid slid down his throat and washed away the unpleasant scratchiness. It felt so good that he lifted the bottle back to his mouth for a second gulp, but before he could start _something_ caught his attention.

He wasn't sure what it was. He didn't see anything out of the ordinary, and when he nonchalantly scanned the area under the guise of taking that drink, he saw nothing at all. An empty parking lot. Some scrub trees. The rise of a mountain off in the distance. There wasn't even a twinkling light in the sky from a passing aircraft. He couldn't hear anything either. No footsteps rustling over gravel or tapping dully against concrete. No voices or music drifting out through the walls of the other motel rooms. No distant sounds of traffic from the highway. No mournful howls from those lean wild dogs that roamed the desert. Not even that weird twangy wet tarp sound he could only assume was made by some kind of large insect since he had yet to spot any of the things.

_No insect noises._ There it was. _That_ was the problem. Felix might have grown up in Eposz, near the southern edge of New Alexandria, but he'd skulked through more than his share of wilderness during the war. And one of the most important lessons he'd learned was that when there was danger, the local wildlife went silent.

Carefully now, more alert than he'd been since he'd woken up, Felix inched toward their room. There was nothing to say that whatever was going down involved them. There were forty-seven other rooms in the joint; some of them were occupied and motels were known galaxy-wide as a haven for those who tended to view laws as more of a guide on how _not_ to live. It could've been someone else. But Felix hadn't survived the life he led by being a guileless moron. He knew that the likelihood of trouble having found them was higher than the possibility that it hadn't.

The curtains were still drawn across the windows. There weren't any cracks between the panels that might suggest someone had been or currently was looking out. Felix watched them for an entire minute, standing motionless against the wall beside them, his body angled just far enough that he had an unobstructed view while still remaining beyond the sight lines of anyone inside. Nothing moved. Not even a twitch. And though he strained to do so, he could hear no sounds within.

_Maybe it's nothing. Maybe you're getting just as paranoid as Locus._ Maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe. There were too many maybes. Felix took a deep breath, held it for a moment to center himself, and as he exhaled, he casually walked to the door, ignoring the way his instincts screamed at him for so brazenly moving in front of the window. But no bullets broke through the glass and tore him apart. The curtains weren't moving. Everything was fine.

Until his fingers closed around the doorknob and he realized that the door wasn't latched. _Guess I'm not paranoid after all._ There was no way for him to know what was waiting for him inside, but he _knew_ there was going to be blood. The only question was, how much blood was there going to be?

Opening the door as easily as if he was a clueless idiot, Felix walked into the room and stopped, not even half a meter in, when three automatic rifles swung in his direction. The men who wielded them were clad in black body armor, visible in the low light coming in from the open door, and their faces were all equally as unfamiliar as they were obviously military. Felix would recognize that douchebag buzzcut _anywhere_.

"Shut the door," the closest one barked at him, flicking the rifle in what was probably an effort to add urgency to the command.

Felix eyed him for a moment, unimpressed, before he reached behind himself and pushed the door closed with his fingertips. It plunged the room into darkness, but he didn't have the opportunity to teach them how colossally stupid such an amateur move really was. An instant later, one of the bedside lamps was clicked on. It wasn't very bright. Although Felix's eyes had adjusted to the darkness outside, he neither flinched nor looked away, which was probably what the goons were counting on. In his peripheral vision, he noted that the bed was empty.

"What are you doing here?" the same guy who'd given the order to close the door demanded, evidently the leader of this little troop of fools.

"Really?" Felix arched an eyebrow. " _You_ broke into _my_ room. Not the other way around." He smiled, all teeth. "But I'd be happy to return the favor."

Captain Buzzcut scowled at him, clearly as unimpressed as Felix was about the whole thing, and stepped aside. Behind him was Locus, bonelessly slumped in one of the chairs. His head hung between his shoulders, his chin nearly resting against his chest, and from the odd angle, it was apparent to Felix that all that was keeping him marginally upright was the fact that his hands were bound somehow behind the back of the chair. There were no obvious signs of blood, suggesting that he was unconscious instead of dead, though how _that_ happened wasn't clear. Drugs? Had he been stunned? With no lingering scent of gas, he could at least rule that out.

"What?" Felix shook his head, feigning confusion. "Am I interrupting?" He clicked his tongue in disapproval. "I get what you're going for here, but cheap motel room interrogation isn't as sexy as kinky dungeon interrogation. Also, you want to strip him _first._ Not later. It's going to be a bitch getting those pants off with that setup."

Whoever had sent these assholes hadn't properly prepared them to deal with their targets. They'd neutralized Locus, sure, but Felix suspected that that had been dumb luck, nothing to do with their dubious skill and everything to do with him being more heavily asleep than usual due to their earlier drinking. And if Felix had been similarly incapacitated, they might have caught him just the same. But he wasn't incapacitated.

And beneath the easy-going, jovial sarcasm, he was _angry._

"You've been poking around New Phoenix," Buzzcut said, inadvertently revealing that someone—ONI, no doubt, given their investment in the cover-up of the incident—was aware of their presence. The individual who had become Locus' contact in the future, perhaps? "You're going to tell me why and you're going to do it now."

As far as a threat went, it could've been better. Buzzcut wanted information. Threatening to kill Felix to get it would have been counterproductive and he couldn't incapacitate him so badly that he lost the ability to speak. Holding Locus hostage, while a tiny step in the right direction, was going to be a big fucking mistake whenever Locus regained consciousness. The choice wasn't whether he wanted to cooperate or not. It was whether he wanted to string these idiots along until Locus woke up and gave him a hand or just get it over with and exorcise some of that anger coursing like a river under his skin.

The moment hung balanced on a razor's edge, capable of going either way. One man with a knife—because he never went _anywhere_ without a knife—facing off against three with automatic rifles. Felix's fingers tingled, itching to reach for the blade, as he assessed his options. Locus' head was still hanging lifelessly, his body still limp in the chair.

"And if I say no?" Felix asked casually, scanning Buzzcut's stony face.

"Then we'll persuade you," the guy barked back. It took every bit of Felix's self-control not to roll his eyes. "We only need one of you alive."

Next to him, one of the flunkies swung the muzzle of his rifle toward Locus. At such close range, the bullets would tear him apart regardless of where he was shot. To add insult to the stupid son of a bitch's fatal injury, he prodded Locus' cheek with the rifle in pointed emphasis. And there it was, the scale slipping, weighing the odds against them.

The knife was airborne in an instant, taking the dumbass with the rifle through the eye before he was aware that it had been launched. Felix was already across the room as his body dropped to the floor, kicking the other agent's legs out from underneath him. As his balance crumbled, Felix snatched the rifle from his hand, put a bullet through his head, and spun it around on the leader. Buzzcut was snapping out of his surprise and taking aim, not at Felix, which would have been the smart thing to do, but at Locus, probably to try to use him as a bargaining chip to save his pathetic, already lost life.

Without thought, Felix caressed the trigger and put three bullets through his forehead before he had a chance to finish his turn. Behind him, blood and shredded bits of brain splattered across the wall as the back of his head blew out. The corpse pitched backward with the force of the bullets' momentum and fell in a disordered heap at Locus' feet.

In the silence—not deafening thanks to high-tech, top secret suppressors that did a hell of a lot more to cut down on the noise of a gunshot than the commercial models—Felix surveyed the damage with a critical eye. Three down. There was blood all over the carpet and a combination of blood and gore on the wall. It looked like the bed took a glancing blow from the spray out of Buzzcut's head, too. _There's no way we're cleaning this up. Not going to be able to sleep here, either._

Setting the rifle aside, Felix bent down to relieve the corpses of their weapons, money, and any other incidental valuables that they may have idiotically brought with them on their failed mission. As he worked, he kept glancing up at Locus, hoping to see some signs of life. They didn't have all night. Eventually Team Retard was going to have to check in with whoever had sent them, and when they didn't, their failure was going to be known. After that, it would go one of two ways: a second, probably more competent team would be sent after them or the person in charge would cut the losses, back the fuck off, and let them alone. With the likelihood of the latter being slim to nil, Felix knew that they didn't have an unlimited amount of time to work with.

He was finishing up with the last body's disappointingly empty pockets when he heard a soft inhalation. It was nearly imperceptible, easily missed if he hadn't been listening. But because he had been waiting for it, Felix looked up as Locus opened his eyes.

"You missed the party," he told him mournfully.

For a man who'd just spent some time involuntarily unconscious, Locus sure looked alert now. He sat up, mouth twitching into a frown as he discovered that he was bound, and took in the aftermath of his capture. "We could have questioned them," he said after a moment, dipping his chin toward the bodies.

Shrugging, Felix got to his feet. "Yeah."

"But you killed them."

He was pretty sure that Locus was trying to be disapproving, but Felix hardly cared. "Damn right I did."

"Felix—"

Spinning around, he met Locus' eyes with a venomous glare. "They threatened to kill you."

They stared at each other, Felix breathing just a hair too fast and Locus looking like he was doing his utmost to marshal his patience. It was a stupid reaction. Their attackers were dead. The evidence of that was all over the walls, streaked across Felix’s hands, and soaking into his shoes. Locus was awake now. He was speaking coherently and acting like his miserable old self. But some irrationally unsteady part of Felix still wanted to scream at him for the lecture and vent his anger at the situation by burning the motel down.

Locus must have realized that they'd reached an impasse, because he licked his lips and said with carefully deliberate calm, "I'm fine."

Sensing an attempt to mollify him, Felix glowered back. "What the hell happened anyway?"

"I fell asleep shortly after you did." Locus frowned, eyes growing distant as he searched his memories. "Something woke me. Felt like a bite. But then I..." He shook his head, then tipped it toward the wall. "I woke up to this."

_A bite?_ Stepping forward, half tripping over someone's arm, Felix grabbed Locus' collar and yanked it down to examine his neck. One side was unmarred, but the other had a tiny red puncture, visible mostly because Felix knew what he was looking for. "Tranq. Why the fuck..."

"Felix _._ " Blinking out of his thoughts, Felix looked at him and raised an eyebrow. Locus shifted in the chair. "Why am I cuffed to a chair?"

"I went to get some water. _Someone_ forgot to get it earlier," he added, glaring down at him in consternation. Instead of looking abashed, Locus just looked impatient. "Came back to this. Those assholes wanted to know what we were doing here. Why we're asking questions about New Phoenix. Then they fucked up."

Locus met his eyes, held them for a few seconds, and repeated, _very_ slowly, " _Why am I cuffed to a chair?_ "

"I just told—" As Locus rattled his hands against the back of the chair, the true meaning of the question clicked. " _Oh._ " Felix followed it up with a shrug. "I was hoping you'd wake up before I had to let you fall off of it and try to drag you out the door through the mess."

Even in the relatively dim light of the room, he could see Locus grinding his teeth. In an effort to hustle him along on whatever he was trying to say, Felix lifted both eyebrows. And immediately got snapped at for his effort. " _Felix!_ "

"What?" he retorted defensively, leaning back.

"Uncuff me," Locus growled, before dropping his voice into a lower, more menacing register. " _Now._ "

It was the wrong fucking tone to use on him, still poised as he was on the brink of violence and jittery with adrenaline. A too-sharp smile knifed across his mouth as he impulsively leaned back into Locus' space. "Or," he replied with silky predation, dragging the tip of his forefinger down the taut muscle of Locus' neck, smearing his skin with blood. "We could have some fun with it."

Anger flashed in Locus' eyes before he narrowed them in warning and hissed with icy hostility, " _Isaac."_

"Jesus, _fine_." Recoiling in irritation— _irritation_ , nothing else, nothing remotely like hurt over the rejection or something more twisty and uncomfortable that he refused to name—Felix kicked one of the bodies out of the way and stalked around the chair. "You don't have to be such a crabby bastard over it."

The keys to the things were tucked into one of the many pockets that existed between the three dead bodies. Felix couldn't remember which one he'd found them in and he didn't care to look again. It was easier just to pick the locking mechanism on the things himself.

"There," he snapped, as he yanked them off and chucked them onto the floor. "Happy now?"

Locus stood up as soon as he was free and took another look around, rubbing his wrists. As if Felix hadn't said anything, he asked, "How long was I out?"

"I don't know." Picking his way over the bodies to the bed, Felix tried to hazard a guess. "Fifteen minutes?"

"Since you killed them?"

That was a little easier to calculate. "Maybe five?"

"We need to go," Locus said decisively, already halfway to the bathroom.

Felix waved a hand at the paraphernalia he'd collected and piled on the bed. "I'm not carrying all this shit back to the shuttle on foot." When the sound of water rushing from the bathroom faucet filled the room, he raised his voice to holler over it. "And there's no way to make rifles inconspicuous on the _bus_!"

"Go get a car," Locus told him as he came back into view, scrubbing the blood off his neck with a wet washcloth.

"Oh, so _now_ I can steal cars."

He sighed so heavily that Felix probably would have felt the gust of air from his breath if he'd been closer. "Felix."

Abandoning the loot in favor of the infinitely more interesting errand he'd just been tasked with, Felix headed for the door. "They really drug you out of the wrong side of bed, didn't they?" He shook his head, clicking his tongue. "Christ."

Before he was halfway there, Locus stopped him with a nagging, "Wash the blood off your hands first."

Throwing his head back, Felix rolled his eyes at the ceiling. " _Oh my god._ " The man could suck the fun out of absolutely everything. "Yes, _mother._ "

Another long-suffering, thoroughly fed up sigh followed him as he resentfully made his way back to the bathroom.

* * *

As unfamiliar with the planet as they were and armed only with limited information about the men who'd been sent after them, the obvious solution to their immediate problem was to return to their ship. It was the safest, most secure location available to them. The cloaking device kept them untraceable in their synchronous orbit and controlled points of entry meant that on the off-chance that they were discovered and their ship caught, it would be a hell of a fight for hostile forces to gain entry to it.

They made a beeline for the shuttle in the stolen car, quickly loaded it with their belongings—old and newly acquired—and took off. Because there was no way to know how much the enemy knew about their movements or whether they were already being tracked, Locus took a circumspect route back to the ship that _should_ have thrown mere observers off the trail. There weren't guarantees about that, either. While Locus handled the piloting, Felix swept the interior for foreign devices. Neither of them had glimpsed signs of unauthorized entry when they'd boarded, but not even Felix would contend that it hurt to be too careful.

He found nothing out of the ordinary and the sensor sweeps he ran after joining Locus in the cockpit were negative. Locus didn't suspect that they were being followed, and Felix was inclined to defer to his greater sense of paranoia on that one, but they both began to breathe easier when they were finally aboard their ship, with easy access to a wide array of weaponry and a top of the line SFTE that would get them into slipspace faster than the standard UNSC craft.

Relaxing, however, wasn't on the docket. They ran some precautionary scans on the ship, double-checked the defensive systems to ensure they were operational and ready for activation should such measures be required, and distributed a portion of their armory at strategic points around the ship for convenient retrieval. If they were discovered, they would run. If escape wasn't possible, they would fight. And if they were boarded, they would kill everyone who set foot inside.

When all of the routine preparations were completed and they could afford to stand down, they reconvened on the bridge, where Locus grilled Felix about the incident at the motel for an hour. Even being cooperative and relatively patient about repeating himself over and over, Felix didn't have many useful details to share. For once, Locus didn't appear to be blaming him for it, either. Maybe that was because he'd been caught and rendered useless for the duration of the incident. Or maybe there was a previously undiscovered limit to his unrealistic expectations and he simply recognized that it had all happened too damn fast.

What information they were able to cobble together had to be achieved through inference.

To execute an operation that quickly and seamlessly, Captain Buzzcut and his goons had to have been highly trained. That sort of training came only through very select avenues. And those avenues could be narrowed down considerably when the rest of the facts were taken into account. They had known about Locus and Felix's interest in New Phoenix. Had they been monitoring the city from a remote location and noticed them enter the quarantine zone? If so, that suggested either affiliation with ONI or some as yet unidentified faction interested in alien weaponry. Had their interest been discovered while they canvassed the suburbs? If that were the case, that suggested such an intense determination to monitor the city that undercover agents were placed among the citizenry to keep track of who was talking about what and why.

The third, infinitely more disturbing option—the one they didn't discuss because Felix had not yet told Locus about his special project—was that whoever he was trying to bait within Naval Intelligence had learned a hell of a lot more about him than he had about them, _had_ _tracked him down_ , and had sent agents to uncover what exactly he knew. If that were true, they were in a lot deeper than they realized and the motel incident was, from a terribly unfavorable angle, actually Felix's fault.

_Wouldn't that just be my luck? Finally don't get blamed for something and it_ was _my fault._ He was tempted to laugh in morbid humor, but laughing ran the risk of Locus wanting to know what he thought was funny about the situation. With no suitable response, such inquiries would just bring him precariously close to the admission he didn't want to make.

Experience with the UNSC and the shady things it had done in an effort to keep humanity from becoming an unfortunate footnote in the annals of history suggested that Naval Intelligence was likely the source of Buzzcut's orders. It just made more sense than a clandestine organization of alien weaponry enthusiasts.

Although, what they were going to do about it was still undetermined. Locus would not give up on his stupid mission, not even with the collective might of ONI potentially bearing down on them. And Felix, who thought the mission wasn't worth it _at all_ , was still nursing enough of a grievance with Buzzcut's actions that he was perfectly content with the unwinnable prospect of taking on the entire organization. A few strategically dropped nukes, some assassinations, and he was reasonably sure they could either dissuade further encroachment on their business or start such an enormous interstellar war that they could disappear into the chaos.

Of course, Locus unequivocally rejected the interstellar war idea. And the use of nukes. And Felix's spur of the moment backup plan of stirring up the remnants of the Covenant.

After about three hours of debate, they decided that they were going to remain in orbit around Earth for a few more days. Like practically every other organization of any real power in the UEG, ONI was headquartered there. Where precisely was anyone's guess; there were plenty of rumors, but only ONI personnel knew with certainty where the place was located. While in orbit, they were going to do their best to ferret out the coordinates of the HQ and also maintain surveillance on activity stemming from their brief visit to New Phoenix. Long familiarity with this sort of mind-numbingly boring work told Felix that something would eventually give, someone would get overconfident and make a mistake and then...

Then, they would decide what to do with the opportunities the mistake presented. 

* * *

Technically, it was probably a stupid fucking idea to keep poking at the spook who'd taken his vague bait now that they suspected they were known on some level to ONI. But Felix was _bored_ and didn't have anything else to do. And quite frankly, he wanted answers. Not just for their present predicament, though that would of course be helpful and it would be inordinately gratifying to get the information before Locus could secure it. He also had a score to settle, however irrationally, with whoever had dared to get close to Locus in the future.

He knew it didn't matter anymore. Now that he was alive, there weren't going to be any opportunities for other people to weasel their way into Locus' confidence. But just because it wouldn't happen didn't negate the fact that it _had_ happened once in some other timeline that no longer existed. It was still an insult for which he was damn well going to get satisfaction. Namely, by walking up to the motherfucker, demanding access to the tech he’d seen in the future, and then putting some well-placed bullets in a variety of body parts.

In an effort to keep his little hobby a secret, Felix had tucked himself away in one of the unused rooms, as far from the bridge and the living quarters as he could get without donning his armor and sitting outside on the hull with his laptop and a small satellite. Locus had been doing fuck only knew what—collating his internet searches or cleaning all of the rifles they hadn't used or something equally dull and useless—when he'd disappeared and hadn't yet come looking for him. Knowing Locus, however, it would take more than two hours to prompt him to conduct a search for Felix. Two _days_ might not even be a long enough absence for that.

It was while he was in the middle of trying to sort through some of the more legitimate rumors about ONI's operations in the hope of learning useful information to use against his opponent when he heard the door slide open. Knowing that it couldn't be anyone other than Locus, Felix didn't bother looking up. If he wanted something, he'd let him know. If he was just there to see what was keeping him occupied, he'd look and take a hike once his curiosity was satisfied.

_Nothing's ever truly a secret. People aren't built to keep them. Pride, arrogance, insecurity—shit like that makes people brag. An organization as big as Naval Intelligence? More than one person has said something over the years._ Felix's fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling up pages and dismissing them as unimportant as he scanned them for information. _Someone said it. Someone recorded it. The info's there._ Distantly, he felt Locus' hand touch his arm. _I just have to find—_

It was too fast for him to fully comprehend what was happening. There was a vise-like grip on his arms, wrenching discomfort, and then something so cold that it felt wet— _metal,_ some hyper-alert part of him identified helpfully—pressed into his skin. Startled, scrambling to get his thoughts to catch up with what was happening to his body, Felix tried to reach for his knife, only to find that he couldn't move his arms. The metal bit into his wrists when he tried to pull them apart.

_Handcuffs_ , he realized, reflexively making another, albeit futile, attempt to yank his arms free. They remained in place and his arms stayed bent back behind the chair. Just like Locus had been on Earth _. Fuck._

Even as his brain caught up—they'd been caught unaware, the ship had been infiltrated—and he started to twist the chair around to do... _something_ , anything to fight his attacker off, Felix thought about Locus, likely just as oblivious as he had been. He wouldn't go down without a fight either, but if there were too many of them and he wasn't anywhere near a weapon, he might not be able to get free. He might get killed. And then—

And then they had better hope that they killed Felix, too, or the homeworld of humanity was going to _burn._

"If you—" Felix hissed, his momentum hijacked as the son of a bitch behind him grabbed the back of the chair and spun him around. "—killed— _Locus?_ "

It wasn't a smug piece of shit ONI agent standing there, outfitted in tactile gear and wielding a rifle. It was Locus, still wearing the same t-shirt and jeans from earlier in the day, bare-foot and empty-handed. Felix gaped at him, rendered momentarily speechless from the internal high-speed collision of adrenaline, fury, surprise, and confusion. Locus' expression was disturbingly flat. Whatever was going on in there, no hint of it showed on his face or in his eyes.

Felix shook his head. "What are you—" Lightning quick, Locus grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head back. " _Ow_! What the fuck are you doing?"

Locus didn't answer him. When he opened his mouth to demand an explanation, he yanked harder on his hair in an obvious warning: _shut up._   

Never one to let warnings dissuade him under normal circumstances, Felix found it extraordinarily difficult to heed this one. Locus was often rough and bossy, but the behavior he was exhibiting now was so uncharacteristic of him that it was impossible not to wonder if something had happened to him. Had ONI agents infiltrated the ship after all and somehow brainwashed Locus into doing their dirty work for them? That was highly unlikely, but if anyone was manufacturing drugs to make people biddable, it would be the morally dubious arm of the UNSC. Or was it something worse? Had it taken this long for Locus to get pissed off at him for his manipulations? Was he going to kill him? Had he been in secret communication with Wash this whole time?

One after another, scenarios of varying horror flashed through Felix's mind. Some of them he could live with. Some he could twist to his favor with enough effort. But some of them were enough to make him start twisting his wrists to test the viability of getting the cuffs off. He didn't have a pick on him, but the cuffs weren't _too_ tight. If he dislocated his thumbs, he was pretty sure he'd been able to slip his hands out.

But Locus, watching him like some kind of pitiless bird of prey, was on to him. "Stop it."

_Fuck you_. Felix bared his teeth, off-balance, uneasy, and growing increasingly volatile because of it.

“Don't move,” Locus told him firmly. Then, after a second’s consideration, he added, “And don't speak.”  
  
If he hadn't been staring at Locus as intently at he was, he might have missed it. He almost did. But something about the way Locus paused then seemed almost _expectant_ , like he was trying to communicate something unspoken with him and was waiting impatiently for Felix to get a damn clue. Was that what was happening? Was he... _acting_? God help him if he was. Locus was a shit actor. Or maybe he was trying to send a message of some sort?  
  
Was there a bug in the room? Was he trying to tell him that? If that was the case, restraining him didn’t make any sense. A camera? Was he afraid Felix was going do something he shouldn't be seen doing? Were the agents on the ship? Was he trying to play double-agent until he could figure out what to do? What the fuck was he doing?  
  
Felix couldn't figure it out. His mind was awash in too much chaos, conflicting emotions and thoughts drowning in too much adrenaline. And Locus, with his unreadable expression, wasn’t helping.

Movement caught his eye, Locus’ free hand drifting toward his pocket. Except instead of reaching into it and pulling out a weapon or a note or something to better explain what was going on, it kept going, bypassing the pocket completely. The tips of his fingers brushed the button on his jeans as Felix watched, nonplussed, and flicked it open.

_Oh._ It seemed too good to be true. And maybe it was. Maybe he’d fallen asleep at the computer and some latent part of his brain was putting together a fantasy based on his rejected suggestion back on Earth. But Locus’ fingers had moved on from the button, had taken hold of the zipper tab and were in the process of drawing it down, opening his jeans completely. And Felix realized that it wasn’t a dream. He was wide awake and Locus was staring him with such intensity, his eyes dark, dilated with lust the likes of which Felix had only recently seen in the future.

_Oh, hell yes._ Locus’ grip tightened on his hair, pulling without trying to urge his head in any particular direction, and suddenly he knew what he intended. Knew why he’d cuffed him to the chair and told him not to move. _Fuck_ me _._

But instead of taking his dick out, Locus just sort of froze. Felix frowned slightly, his brow furrowing as he looked from Locus’ open fly to his face in perplexity. _What the fuck are you waiting for? An invitation? You told me not to talk._ One of Locus’ eyebrows twitched, not quite lifting, like he was trying to ask a question. _Is there a question here?_ Meeting his eyes, Felix pointedly, and very slowly, licked his lips. It had a functional purpose, but mostly, he just wanted Locus to stop fooling around and get on with it.

It must have been the signal he was waiting for, or close enough to it that it did the job, because finally, _finally_ , he reached into his underwear and pulled out his cock. He wasn’t hard yet, but he wasn’t wholly soft either, and as Felix stared at him, doing absolutely nothing to mask the hunger in his eyes as he practically devoured the long denied sight of him, he grew a little harder.

His luck must have been turning, because as he watched, Locus stroked himself, not actually jerking off but coaxing his cock to hardness, in a display that was so unintentionally erotic that he could barely believe it was happening. Felix could feel his eyes on him, watching him, but he was too entranced by the sight of Locus' hand gliding up and down the length of his shaft, filling out and firming up with every pass, to look away. His mouth was practically watering to taste it and his lips had parted to make it easier to breathe. It had been a _long_ time, sure, but cocksucking was a lot like riding a bicycle: once learned, the skill was never truly forgotten.  
  
He wanted his mouth around him so badly that the wait was torturous. _I can get you hard_ , he wanted to tell him. _Come here. I'll do it._ But Locus had told him to be quiet and he was half afraid he'd tuck himself back into his pants, zip up, and forget the whole thing if he said a word. And that _could not happen_. Not after years of being denied this. Not after spending night after night tormented by dreams and memories of having him.

If obeying a command to stop talking for once in his life was the price he had to pay to end the interminable drought that had dried up his sex life, so fucking be it.

Locus looked to be prepared to take his good goddamn time about it. Where he got the patience to drag it out for so long was unfathomable, and after watching him for another minute, Felix decided that he'd had enough. _He_ was already hard, had been since about that third pass of Locus' hand over himself, and maybe Locus could ignore the demands of his body forever and a day, but Felix sure as hell could not.

Narrowing his eyes, he hissed at him and sharply tipped his chin, using Locus' hold on his hair to jostle his hand. _Stop fucking around_ , that wordless sound said, conveniently skirting the no talking rule. _Get on with it._  

A muscle twitched at the corner of Locus' mouth, but he must have opted not to pursue the impulse, because he neither said anything nor frowned at him. Just held his eyes for a few seconds, then kicked his legs apart and stepped in between them, right up against the chair. Eager for it, Felix tried to lean forward to meet him, only to be tugged frustratingly back.

Silence be damned, Felix opened his mouth to curse at him. And Locus shifted forward, pressing the head of his cock against, and then between, his lips. _Fucking finally,_ he thought, not the least bit offended by the underlying implication in that oh-so-not-very-subtle maneuver. He'd gotten what he wanted.

Quickly, before Locus could change his mind or start moving, he ran his tongue over the underside of the head and up over the tip. Locus didn't make a sound, he had rarely made much noise during sex, but some infinitesimal thing changed in his face, too minor to earn itself a label yet just enough to let Felix know that he wasn't unaffected by the lick.

_Yeah, that's right. I want this more than you think._ Hoping to goad him into doing something more active than stand there, Felix sucked hard on what little Locus had given him. His hips jerked slightly, clearly taken by surprise. And then, at long last, he moved.

Withdrawing from his mouth almost completely, Locus immediately pushed back in, and this time, he didn't stop. He sheathed his cock in Felix's mouth, ignoring the tiny, involuntary twitch that went through Felix's body as he tried to accommodate him. And withdrew. And plunged back inside.

In the span of seconds, Locus was fucking his mouth, nothing hesitant or gentle about it. Like there hadn't been years between the last time they'd done this and now, he thrust in and out without care for Felix's comfort. His fingers were tight in his hair, holding him in place and occasionally adjusting the cant of his head with a demanding yank that made his scalp burn. And Felix loved every brutal, half-choked moment of it.

He would've liked to have gotten his hands on him, not to slow him down or get him to stop, but just for the additional points of contact, just for the sheer pleasure of _touching_ him. And he would've liked to have had more time to linger over his cock, to suck and lick until he'd coaxed enough precome from him to have a real taste of him. But he couldn't really complain. 

Not when Locus was hanging onto his hair like it was a lifeline. Not when he was so intent on using Felix's mouth in pursuit of his own pleasure that he was almost choking him. Not when he was looking at him like that, like he was the only thing in existence, the only thing that Locus could see.

Felix relaxed into it as well as he could, letting the tension out of his neck so that Locus could manhandle him however he wanted and his throat stayed as open as possible. Every couple thrusts, he went deep and the chair kept him stuck at an angle that wasn't the best for it. But Felix used to be able to deepthroat him like he’d made a career out of it and the occasional hitch in his ability to breathe was to be expected. Even relished.

Unable to take his eyes off of Locus' face, Felix watched him with vicious, too-sharp enthusiasm, drinking in the subtle tensing of his mouth that had always served as the most visible signal that he was getting close to orgasm. Unsurprising, really, that he wasn't going to be able to last very long. When was the last time he'd even gotten off by his own hand? Felix's hands had kept _him_ company through the years, but he didn't know how often that was the case for Locus. If it even _was_ the case.

The rhythm of his hips faltered, a faint stutter in the steady back and forth that quickly grew jerky and fast. Desperate. _Here we go._ Felix would have smiled if he'd been able to do it. The best he could manage was a low, rumbling hum that made Locus inhale sharply and close his eyes. Against his tongue, he felt Locus' cock pulse, seconds before the warm, thick spatter of come coated the back of his throat. Locus kept moving through it, working his hips in short, shallow thrusts, and Felix swallowed around him, greedy for more.

Too soon, it was over. Locus gave him one last weak, halfhearted thrust and then came to a stop. He stood there for a few seconds, lips parted and chest heaving, his eyes still closed and his cock heavy and softening atop Felix's tongue. Basking in the aftermath of his orgasm. It would have been easy to break the hold he had on his hair while he was distracted, but instead of tossing his head and getting free of him, Felix remained as stationary as he could.

He was struggling to breathe properly, taking rapid breaths in and out of his nose in an attempt to ease the constriction in his chest, and he could feel saliva dribbling sloppily down his chin. His jaw ached, though it was nearly eclipsed by the throbbing of his scalp, and the muscles across his shoulders were beginning to burn from the awkward way he was sitting. And he was hard. Incredibly, almost painfully hard. But Felix barely paid attention to any of that. He was too busy studying Locus' face, trying to commit the sight of it lax in pleasure to memory, and licking the last drops of come from his cock.

The sensation must have become too much for Locus' now hypersensitive flesh, because he opened his eyes with a low grunt and eased himself out of Felix's mouth. Almost as an afterthought, he released his grip on him and somewhat awkwardly smoothed out the mess he'd made of his hair. If he hadn't been gingerly moving his jaw around, trying to work the stiffness out of it, Felix would have smirked at him for his trouble. Which maybe he ought to have done anyway, he realized a moment later, as Locus started searching his face.

_Oh, for fuck's sake._ Rolling his eyes, Felix slouched back in the chair and took at stab at speaking. "What?" It came out more like a hoarse croak than an actual word. He swallowed, cleared his throat, and tried again before Locus could say something stupid and ruin the moment. "Want to go again?" As rough and wrecked as his voice sounded, at least the words were intelligible now.

It worked. Locus snorted, his lips twitching in something Felix was willing to bet was _almost a_ smile, and tucked himself back into his pants. With that disaster averted, there was one thing left on Felix's mind: his own dick. And that meant getting out of the handcuffs in a hurry so that he could get himself off. The problem there was Locus. He appeared to be preoccupied with getting himself back in order and was moving at the speed of molasses. _Oh well_ , Felix thought with lust-induced equanimity. _I only need the one hand to jerk off anyway._

As he twisted his wrist, the cuff clacked against the back of the chair, sounding unusually loud in the silence of the room. It certainly caught Locus' attention. He stopped fussing with his clothes and speared Felix with a look.

"Be still."

Surprise, not obedience, made Felix freeze in confusion. "What?"

Locus gave him an oddly severe look. "We aren't finished."

"Oh." _We aren't?_ Locus sure looked done to him, cock now soft and clothes put back to rights. "Uh, what are—" He trailed off into disbelieving, wide-eyed silence as, without preamble, Locus gracefully knelt on the floor right there between his legs. It felt like his heart stopped, like the whole fucking universe stopped, as he struggled to process the sight of Locus _on his knees_ in a position that his body, and especially his dick, viscerally recognized. Then the moment passed and it all came rushing back on the ragged, tortured rasp of his next breath. "Are you fucking with me?" 

"Not yet." Locus actually sounded _smug_ as he casually opened the front of Felix’s jeans, releasing some of the pressure against his straining cock.

Felix almost choked on his tongue. "I meant—"

The look Locus gave him was a contradictory mixture of exasperation and patience. "Isaac."

He barely dared to breathe. Locus' hand was hovering above him, so fucking close to touching him that he could have sworn that he could feel it anyway. "What?"

Instead of answering him, Locus tugged his underwear down out of the way. Felix's hips jerked involuntarily as the cold air washed over his overheated skin, then bucked when hot, callused fingers closed around his shaft. "Be quiet." 

The noise he made was embarrassing, like a bark of laughter that got strangled into a groaning gurgle before it left his throat. Somehow, he managed to make words form out of it. "You're kidding, right?" 

Locus gave him an arch look. "Try," he told him, seconds before he leaned forward and took the head of Felix's cock between his lips, ran the flat of his tongue over the tip, and sucked. _Hard._  

"Oh, _fuck_ ," Felix hissed, practically coming off the chair as his hips lifted, instinctively trying to get further into the wet heat of his mouth. Immediately, Locus shoved them back down, then kept his hands there, splayed over his hips, holding them against the chair. 

That negligent show of thoughtless strength sent such a hard jolt of arousal through Felix that he whimpered. There was no other word for it and no way to play it off as anything else. Locus paused, the suction disappearing, and raised his eyebrows. It was mockery, plain and simple. The bastard was silently laughing at him and he obviously wanted him to know it. 

There was something scathing and witty he ought to have been saying to that look, but damned if Felix could figure out what it was. Or how to form a coherent sentence. Because as he opened his mouth, Locus dipped his chin, pressed his tongue to the base of his cock, and dragged it up to the tip. Felix hissed a wordless snarl of impatience at him, recognizing the tease for what it was and hating it. Hating it, loving it, craving it, wanting fucking _more._

But where Locus had been determined to get himself off as quickly as possible, he evidently wanted to torment Felix to death. There was no other word for it. He licked his way around his cock like he'd never seen one before and sucked on his balls until Felix couldn't even string a series of curses together to swear at him. Then, after Felix was sure he was going to die from lack of blood to the rest of his body, Locus _finally_ took him into his mouth properly. 

It was as hot and slick as Felix remembered, but though he strained against Locus' hands in a futile attempt to push himself deeper, Locus refused to let him hurry him along. He slid up and down his cock like he had all the time in the galaxy, sucking and tracing the vein with his tongue and humming at random, unpredictable intervals. Every vibration shot up Felix's cock and lodged somewhere in his gut, twisting and tightening with every second of painstaking friction. He stopped caring that he was writhing in the chair, rubbing his wrists raw as he spent his frustration and desperation for release in meaningless movements. He barely recognized the wordless sounds he was making or felt the sweat soaking his shirt and slipping down the back of his neck. 

But Locus wouldn't give him what he wanted, what he fucking _needed_ , and he was gasping and groaning himself hoarser than he already was. "Would you..." Locus made a sound of inquiry that made his nerve-endings light up and fucking _stopped._ Felix wanted to scream at him, probably would have done it too, if he'd had the breath for it. All he could manage was an unthinking, tortured hiss. " _Sam_ , _please._ "

Locus started moving faster or sucked harder or... Felix didn't know. Suddenly it wasn't just enough, it was too much, and he came so hard in a burst of white-hot pleasure that he thought maybe it had managed to kill him after all. He couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't do a damn thing except _feel_.

When he came back to himself, he was slumped in the chair, his arms hanging limply at his sides, and Locus was leaning against the desk beside him, arms crossed loosely over his chest and looking far too pleased with himself. Felix blinked blearily at him, tried to figure out how he'd gotten over there when last he recalled, Locus had been right _here_ in front of him, and gave up after the effort proved too exhausting. But Locus was still looking too damnably smug and his lips were a little swollen— _from sucking my dick_ , Felix thought clearly, triumphantly—and that couldn't stand.

"Is that it?" Someone was talking, throwing out a challenge that sounded drunkenly belligerent in an utterly shattered voice.

It took Locus lifting his eyebrows while looking right at him for Felix's sluggish brain to catch up and recognize that it was probably him. And if he was challenging Locus to more sex, then he was damn well going to do it right. 

He licked his lips—also swollen, he noted dimly—and gathered his thoughts as best he could, pleasure-drunk as he still was. "I can think of at least four other things we could do." 

Locus didn't smile. Because Locus never _really_ smiled. But there was something about his expression that looked amused. "You aren't that young." After a beat, he added thoughtfully, "Neither am I."

"I _meant_ ," he replied, trying for haughty and only managing to hit testy. "That the night's still young. We could..." 

"Get back to work," Locus interrupted smoothly. 

A frisson of irritation fizzled through him, chasing away some of the dullness that was making his brain nothing but useless mush. Felix gave him a flat stare. "Locus." 

He shrugged much too casually. "We have a lot to do." 

Felix wasn't too far gone to waggle his eyebrows suggestively. "You're right." 

"A lot of _work_ to do," came Locus' immediate clarification. He didn't sound annoyed, though. Didn't look it either. 

"You are no fun." 

One dark eyebrow rose. "That wasn't fun?" 

It was such a stupid question that it didn't deserve a response, but Felix made a disgusted noise anyway. "Of course it was. My point is that we can have _more_ fun. There isn't a limit."

Locus was looking so unconvinced that Felix knew he was being a shit on purpose. Whether that meant that getting off made him more insufferable or more tolerable, he didn't know. It could've gone either way. On the one hand, it was downright _playful_ for Locus. But on the other hand, it wasn't leading to more sex. And that was a fucking tragedy.

Pushing himself off the edge of the desk, Locus scooped the handcuffs up from where they'd been lying nearby and slipped them into his pocket. Felix watched this with unconcealed interest. Locus saw him looking and sighed. " _Work,_ Felix."

He was still so boneless that when he heaved a mournful sigh, he inadvertently slid a little further down in the chair. "Boring asshole," he returned, knowing he was whining and not caring _at all._

And Locus, the bastard, gave him the smallest half-smile he had ever seen and walked out of the room.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, Felix was completely useless for the rest of the day. He spent a considerable length of time where Locus had felt him, sprawled out on the chair in a daze. For a while, it was simply because he didn't want to rush himself through the post-orgasmic bliss. When that finally faded away, he was left with dumbfounded shock and no small amount of disbelief that Locus, no discernible sex drive robot _Locus_ , had not only initiated sex, but had borrowed a fantasy Felix had briefly hinted at and ran with it.

Not just ran with it, either, but he'd managed to leave Felix feeling fucked out and exhausted with just a _blowjob_. It was like his transformation into the most boring do-gooder in the universe came with a side of unforeseen sex god. And as unpalatable as Felix found _saving people for free_ to be, if it came with regular sex of the caliber that Locus had just demonstrated, he might be able to tolerate it.

Maybe.

He was going to have to experience it a few more times to be sure. Like, twenty more times. Or a hundred. A hundred sounded like a nice, reasonable number.

Restlessness and the urgent need to work out some of the kinks in his muscles eventually drove him out of the chair, and once he was up walking around and stretching himself out, Felix went to get a drink. A few hours, three bottles of water, two beers, a full meal, and a failed attempt to pry Locus away from his damn work later, he decided to call it a night. He was pleasantly tired from the unexpected events of the day, more sexually sated than he'd been in years, and getting a little desperate for a shower.

Getting a fresh pair of shorts to wear to bed, Felix shut himself in the bathroom of his quarters, stripped off his sweaty clothes, cranked the water up as hot as he could stand, and got into the shower. For a long time, he just stood there under the spray, letting the heat of the water soak into his skin and ease some of the tension from his muscles. When he felt as loose as he was going to get, Felix leisurely washed first his hair and then the rest of his body. It was as he was running slick, soapy hands over his stomach and down toward his groin that he found himself idly replaying the highlights of the afternoon through his mind.

Locus standing in front of him, still fully clothed, fucking his mouth with single-minded determination. Locus on his knees, his lips stretched taut around Felix’s cock, sliding softly over his skin. The press of his fingers into Felix’s hips, hard enough that they’d left bruises behind. The wet, obscenely hot sound of Locus’ cock moving in and out of his mouth.

Felix didn’t realize that he was hard until he had already wrapped a hand around himself, and then it was such a simple, automatic thing to lean his forehead against the cool wall of the shower and jerk himself off. It was quick, he didn’t bother playing with his balls or toying with his ass. Just fisted his hand firmly around his dick and pumped his wrist, remembering the way Locus tasted, the way his mouth had felt, until another orgasm was shuddering through him, nowhere near as powerful as the one he’d had earlier and substantially less satisfying. But he wasn’t hard anymore and it had taken the edge off enough that he knew he’d be able to get to sleep without rehashing the events of the day, wondering what was going on with Locus, wishing they were having sex again, or resentfully hating his bed for being empty.

He quickly rinsed himself again, turned off the water, opened the shower door, and stepped out into a frigid blast of cold air. Shivering, Felix grabbed a towel and set about drying himself as fast as possible, scowling at the bathroom door the entire time. It was ajar, hanging open just far enough to let all of the warm air out. _Stupid thing must not latch properly. I’m going to have to get Locus to fix it if we’re going to keep this ship._

Once he was as dry as he was going to get, he pulled on the shorts, brushed his teeth, and hauled himself into the bedroom. It was like he got more exhausted with every step. By the time he reached the bed, he could barely keep his eyes open and practically fell into it. He made a half-assed attempt to get comfortable, almost got the sheets up where they belonged, and then just gave up. Sleep was too strong to resist and he didn’t want to do it anymore.

As he drifted off, he thought he felt something brush his shoulders. And maybe there was a rustling sound or some shifting movement underneath him. But really, it wasn’t important. _Worry about it later,_ was his last coherent thought before he fell asleep.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can be found on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ereliswrites) & [Tumblr](http://griffonfarm.tumblr.com). Thanks for reading!


	5. Five

The problem with space, Felix had discovered early on in his career of cavorting around the galaxy getting paid for the thing he did best, was that it was impossible to have a normal sleep cycle. He'd grown up on a planet, spent the better part of the first sixteen years of his life experiencing _mornings_ and _nights_ and all the variations of light and darkness in between, and although he'd spent even longer alternating between living planetside and on a ship out in the endless dark, he had never really gotten used to waking up in the "morning" and seeing nothing but the same pitch black he'd gone to sleep in. It always made him feel just a little weird, trying to adjust to the dissonance between his body trying to tell him that yes time really had passed and his eyes telling him not to be a gullible idiot.

It was probably morning when he opened his eyes and peered around the dark room, but because he'd picked a room on the wrong damn side of the ship, the view out of the tiny window was a field of black speckled with stars, not the blue-white-brown hulk of Earth. He _felt_ rested, though his mouth was dry as fuck and as soon as he moved his body sent up about a dozen complaints about it. Like Locus wasn't enough of a miserable buzzkill when it came to having a sex life. He didn't need his own body being a bastard about it, too.

Tempting as it was to lay there forever, sprawled out across the mattress, he was thirsty, he was hungry, and there was a niggling sense of disquiet at the back of his mind that wouldn't let him close his eyes and fall back asleep. A dream? Something he forgot to do yesterday? Something he wanted to tell Locus? 

_Must not have been too important or you wouldn't have forgotten_ , he told himself reasonably, as he shoved himself up onto his elbows and scratched at his face. Scratching quickly turned into a half-assed massage at the corners of his jaw when a mild yawn tugged too-tight muscle and made him wince. _Note to self: up the blowjob regimen. This is fucking embarrassing._  

More than a little disappointed with his body’s lack of flexibility, Felix unearthed himself from the bed and wasted a few precious minutes that could have been spent scrounging for caffeine stretching out his back and shoulders. When he no longer felt like he'd been afflicted with rigor mortis, he threw on some clothes and went trudging toward the galley. He was still struggling through a lazy, sleepy haze as he stepped through the door and ran smack into the strong scent of coffee. _Real_ coffee. None of that instant shit with which starship manufacturers inevitably and sadistically outfitted their products. 

A pot of it was sitting tantalizingly on the counter, practically calling his name. 

Picking it up, Felix took a swig straight from the pot, blithely ignored the sting when it scalded his tongue, and headed out in search of entertainment. He found it sitting on the bridge, absently sipping from a mug while intently doing something at one of the computer terminals. He watched from the doorway, nursing a mouthful of coffee, for a few seconds, then swallowed it and wandered over. 

"Please don't tell me you're working already," he said critically, staring down his nose at the screen.

Locus' eyes remained glued to whatever he was doing. "It's almost noon," he replied dryly. He typed out a few commands in silence, then glanced up at him. "I thought you were going to sleep all..." Consternation flittered across his face for no conceivable reason. "...day." 

Noticing that his mug was almost empty, Felix helpfully topped it off, sacrificing a whole cup's worth of coffee—without needing to hear a word of prompting from Locus about it, he deserved a medal for his thoughtfulness—out of the goodness of his heart. Once that was done, he took another drink from the pot. "Why?" He lifted his eyebrows hopefully. "Did you want me for something?"

Sex, he meant. And hoped that his expression was communicating that clearly enough so that Locus wouldn't try to foist some of his boring surveillance research bullshit off on him. 

Sighing, Locus reached up, plucked the coffee pot out of his grasp, and before Felix could get his mouth open to protest the egregiousness of the theft, shoved the mug into his empty hand. "Don't start." 

"But—"

Locus held up a hand to forestall the protest. "I'll make you a deal."

That sounded ominous. Felix begrudgingly took a drink from the mug, eyeing him warily over the rim of it in plain suspicion. "What?"

"Help me figure out who's targeting us and why." He pointed to the computer screen as he said it, presumably because he thought the visual aid was necessary. When Felix opened his mouth to remind him that that could take _days_ , Locus barreled on. "Give it your _full_ attention. No distractions. And I'll give you mine for—" There was the slightest of pauses. "—forty-eight hours."

Felix stared at him, the mug just high enough to conceal his sagging jaw. _Two days_ of Locus' attention, undiluted by missions or work or unimportant bullshit, was a generous, wholly unexpected offer. Even if he took into account how daunting the task was that he was being asked to perform, it was still a pretty good bargain. But Felix was nothing if not an opportunist. "Ninety-six," he volleyed back almost immediately.

It wasn't necessary for Locus to say anything. His flat, moderately narrow-eyed expression said it all.

Undeterred by the look, Felix nodded toward the screen. "It's going to take forever. Shifting through all that shit is boring as hell and you know it. If I'm going to have to sit here for days digging through websites and reading hundreds of tedious emails between low-level bureaucrats _without complaining_ , I'm going to need more than two days."

The faint sideways cant to Locus' head signified that he was at least considering Felix's argument. Not quite certain how they'd gotten there and not entirely convinced he was actually awake, he slurped in another mouthful of coffee. It was still hot, but after as much scorching as his tongue had endured over the last few minutes, he couldn't really feel it.

" _No_ complaining?" Locus challenged him, after a moment's silence.

He nodded serenely, knowing there was no way Locus was ever going to agree to it and therefore not worrying about his inability to hold up his end of the deal.

"Until we identify the source?" he pressed, and Felix knew that he was looking for the loophole through which he would later try to wriggle.

"Not a peep," he assured him, smirking behind the safety of the mug. "Nothing but cooperation, hard work, and helpfulness."

Locus arched an eyebrow, effectively conveying his utter lack of belief in that promise. "Manage half of that and I'll give you a week." 

It was a good thing he wasn't taking another drink, otherwise he probably would have choked on it. Locus was so full of shit. _Full of shit or he really doesn't have a clue what I meant_. The smart thing to do was accept it and force him to fulfill his part of the deal when he inevitably learned the truth of it and balked. But Felix had the oddest habit of picking the worst times to be an idiot.

"You get that I'm talking about sex, right?" he was horrified to hear himself inquire. "Not reorganizing the storeroom."

He rolled his eyes. "I'm aware."

_Take it and shut up. Shut up shut up shut up._ "A _week_ of no work, no missions, no community service projects, no bullshit." Locus nodded, and like a fool, he kept digging at it. "Are you sure you can handle that?"

And he _really_ must have been dreaming, because Locus leaned toward him a little, looked him right in the eyes, and said in that low, menacing voice that always went straight to his dick, "Are _you_?"

_Holy shit._ Before Locus could change his mind, Felix stuck his hand out. "Deal."

Taking it, Locus squeezed his hand so hard that his knuckles ground together. After they shook on it, he let him go, spun around to face his computer screen, and went back to work like the entire conversation hadn't happened. That left Felix standing there beside his chair, trying to find his balance while the firmament upon which he'd based the last few years of their interaction rocked and heaved like it was in the grip of a massive earthquake. It was possible that Locus didn't expect their search to be successful and was just trying to buy himself a little peace and quiet. But it was also possible that all of his years of sexual repression had caught up with him and now that he'd had a taste of what he'd been missing, he wanted to make up for lost time.

Knowing Locus the way he did, Felix assumed it was the former. But the—highly unlikely—prospect of the latter was like a wet dream come true. And if it _was_ true, it might actually make up for all the years he'd had to make do with his hands.

Nonchalantly swiping the coffee pot back and depositing the mug on the edge of the console, Felix oh so casually sauntered over to an open work station and sat down. Locus paid absolutely no attention to him, but he just _knew_ that he was tracking the sound of his footsteps, no doubt smugly congratulating himself on manipulating Felix into being quiet and marginally productive for once. _Enjoy it while it lasts, asshole._ Tamping down on a smirk, he logged into the system and pulled up the central browser. _After we're done with this, neither of us will be walking right for a long-ass time._

"Where're you at right now?" Felix called over as he absently opened his messages. There was no sense in covering the ground Locus had already searched.

"I'm cross-referencing UNSC and ONI activity on Earth through the last ten months," Locus returned in his no-nonsense mission voice, not bothering to look away from his screen. "I want to see who took an interest in New Phoenix, when, and why prior to the incident."

That sounded like a massive undertaking for which Felix had none of the required patience. There was one unread message from an unfamiliar address in his inbox. Idle curiosity prodded Felix into opening it as he chewed thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek.

"I guess I'll start with that news company that monopolized coverage of the event." It would probably be boring, but he thought it might be less boring and less frustrating than running up against one impenetrable military firewall after another. "What was it? Wavelength? Way Station?" 

"Waypoint." 

Felix snapped his fingers. "That. I'll check it out. See who owns it. What the owners have invested in." Too busy following the thread of the idea, he wasn't paying attention to what he was reading as he scanned the email. "See if there are any military connections. Maybe we can trace it back to..." 

_Wait. What?_

Slowly, as a bottomless abyss opened underneath his stomach and it plummeted into the depths at breakneck speed, Felix dragged his eyes back to the top of the message and started reading in earnest. _Fuck. Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck._

"What?" he heard Locus asking, but his voice seemed to come from far away and the sound of it was dampened by the ringing in his ears.

_Fuck._ Lifting his head, Felix spun the chair toward the front of the ship. On the viewscreen was a vast expanse of space stretching out into infinity on one side and the blue-white curve of the planet on the other. The planet, stars, and the deep black of space. Nothing else. _Nothing else._

Felix whipped back around to the computer screen, his heart racing so fast that the pounding of each beat was starting to drown out all the other sounds in the room. His fingers were shaking and the back of his neck was crawling with unease. But the words on the screen hadn't changed. And all the denials and excuses Felix wanted to make to downplay the urgency of what he was seeing weren't enough to erase the screaming of every battle-honed instinct he possessed.

" _Felix!_ " Locus barked in his ear, the sharp sound of it from such close proximity making him jump. Twisting to face him, he found Locus standing at his side, not quite at the right angle to see the screen, looking down at him with a frown of... Felix was too rattled to try to interpret it. "What is it?"

He opened his mouth, thinking to say _something_ , only to find that nothing would come out. There was no way to hide it. No excuse that would sweep the whole thing under the rug. No quick fix he could finagle to avoid having to tell Locus about it. And because he had no other recourse, he gestured toward the screen in defeat. 

Frown deepening, Locus stepped closer and leaned further into his space to see it better. With the few lines already seared into his brain, Felix just glumly watched his face, bracing for the diatribe he knew was coming. This time, he was fully aware that he probably deserved it, too.

The missive was simple. Just five sentences.

_You and Locus will come to the attached coordinates at 2200 tonight. You will come unarmed or you will be shot on sight. If you believe that missing our appointment would be to your advantage, know that I will have your ship shot down at 2202. Should you attempt to leave orbit, all ODPs in range will fire upon you. The choice is yours._

By the time he reached the end, Locus' face was flat, utterly devoid of expression. He didn't look Felix's way as he asked, without any inflection whatsoever, "Who is this from?"

_I'm so fucked._ There wasn't a word for how fucked he was. It was in a class by itself and there wasn't a goddamn thing he could do about it. "I don't fucking know." He could feel the tightening across his shoulders as they automatically tried to hunch defensively against Locus' ire, but he fought it, refusing cower from what was probably the first fully justifiable expression of anger toward him that he'd experienced over the years they'd known each other. "That's what I was trying to figure out."

A muscle toward the bottom of Locus' cheek twitched. Felix eyed him sidelong, waiting for the explosion. Instead of unleashing it on him, he took a deep, slow breath. "Explain that."

If he wasn't going to cower, he damn well wasn't going to cross his arms like a petulant child forced to weather a berating either. He flexed his fingers, hoping to distract his arms from making the attempt, and started tapping his fingertips against the arms of the chair. Paranoia and alarm made it difficult to sit still, but with Locus practically breathing fire down the back of his neck, he couldn't get up. That would reek too much of cowardly retreat.

"Remember back on Venezia? I said I was going to work on something and tell you if I found anything?" Felix nodded toward the message. "This was it. I was trying to—That contact, okay? The unidentified one you had in the future. I was trying to figure out who the fuck it was. Because whoever it was _knew_ you. Or at least knew how to get into your good graces enough to earn your trust. You took tech and intel from this asshole like you'd gotten it yourself. You _trusted_ what you got enough to plan whole missions around it. I don't care how determined you are to become the savior of the goddamn universe, you don't trust people blindly."

Locus didn't disagree with him. In fact, Felix thought he saw the subtlest inclination of his chin, like he was actually _agreeing_ with that point.

"And it wasn't run of the mill shit either. Cloaking devices. That experimental alternative to biofoam. That thing that changed your fucking face. Normal people don't have access to that shit. Most people in our—in _my_ line of work don't have it. The tech, the level of detail of the intel, I figured it was ONI. And I _thought_ that maybe some spook was keeping an eye on shit after New Phoenix. Maybe learned about Alvaro that way."

Scowling in frustration—at the situation, at himself for fucking up somehow, at his inability to be valuable in a way that Locus would actually appreciate now that he was undergoing a personality adjustment—Felix opened a few more windows and called up the history of the traps he'd been laying so that Locus could see that he hadn't been writing his name and their ship's coordinates everywhere for all and sundry to locate them. "Here it is. Everything I've done." He waved expansively at the windows. "I wasn't even sure I had anything until this fucking message came through."

Surreptitiously, he watched from the corner of his eyes as Locus scanned through it, trying to gauge where the debacle was going to go by the nearly imperceptible changes to his demeanor. It was impossible to make an accurate guess. Before Chorus, he would have assumed he'd get yelled at first and then the silent treatment later, after they cleaned it up. After their stint on that decrepit planet, however, he thought it could go either way. Maybe it would be a verbal battle, maybe Locus would slug him and let it go, or maybe he'd kill him despite all that _no killing_ bullshit and fuck off to fuck Wash.

It took a few minutes, and the longer the silence drug on the greater Felix's desire to force the confrontation just to get it over with became, but eventually, finally, Locus shot him an inscrutable sideways glance. "What do you think?"

Felix frowned at him, confused. "About what?"

Locus flicked his fingers at screen. "Tonight."

_What?_  "I don't..." He shook his head. "There isn't much of a choice, is there? If this is the same person who was orchestrating that shit in the future, I doubt it's a bluff. Which means we have to go or we're going to take a dozen or so MAC rounds to the hull."

"If what this says is true, your contact could have fired on us at any time," Locus replied evenly, sounding entirely too thoughtful and not nearly angry enough. "That we haven't been suggests that killing us is not the aim." 

" _Your_ contact," Felix muttered under his breath. "This bastard was yours first."

His very reasonable correction was ignored like he hadn't said a damn thing. "The meeting. Your contact wants this meeting more than that message suggests."

In the interest of maintaining the odd truce that was currently holding, Felix kept the second correction to himself. "You really want to walk into that unarmed?" 

Something happened to Locus' face. It looked like he was smiling one of those thin-lipped barely there smiles that only rarely ever graced his mouth. "Without a knife or a firearm, how many ways could you kill me right now?" 

In spite of himself and the deep shit he was still sure he was buried in, Felix grinned back at him. "Theoretically or literally?"

"Literally." 

He didn't even need to look around the bridge for possible impromptu weapons. " _You_ , five. Maybe six if I got lucky. Anyone else, at _least_ thirteen."

It happened again, only this time, Felix actually saw the corner of his lips curve upward. "If they wanted us dead, we'd be dead already. Telling us to come unarmed is for the protection of the people who'll be meeting us." Locus tipped his head further so that he could meet Felix's eyes. "Any weapons we need, they'll bring with them. We'll use those if it becomes necessary."

Just like that. Like it was perfectly normal for two unarmed people to walk into unfamiliar territory filled with an unknown number of fully armed hostiles, kill them all with their own weapons, and walk on out unscathed. And for the people they'd been, it _was_ normal. But ever since Locus had decided that he wanted to change, Felix hadn't known who _they_ were. A ruthless killer and a wannabe hero didn't quite have the same ring to it as two ruthless, unstoppable killers. 

Despite knowing that he ought to let it alone, Felix couldn't resist asking curiously, "What happened to not wanting to kill without some kind of purpose? The way they talk about themselves, ONI's supposed to be one of the good guys."

"Protecting ourselves is purpose enough," Locus replied mildly, without a hint of rebuke or irritation. "It doesn't matter who's attacking us." 

So he _hadn't_ completely lost his mind and gone off the deep end. That was something. It gave Felix a shred of hope that they hadn't lost _all_ of their common ground. And it also gave him an inkling of an idea for what to do about his Freelancer-shaped problem. 

"No." 

Felix looked at him, eyebrow rising. "No what?" 

Locus gave him an odd look, some kind of paradoxical bastard of patient and exasperated. Having never seen anything quite like it on him before, Felix didn't know what to make of it or how to interpret it properly. "Provoking Agent Washington into attacking us isn't acceptable."

_Son of a bitch._ He stared at him, momentarily speechless by that disturbingly perceptive insight. All too quickly, that stare became a scowl. "Why not?"

He half-expected the question to be ignored out of the same reticence—he could only assume it was born of possessiveness over his pet Freelancer; guilt wasn't something Locus ever felt in relation to anything to do with him—that always seemed to prevent him from getting a straight answer where Wash was concerned. This time, however, Locus took a bracing breath and actually responded. "Alleviating your misplaced jealousy isn't an adequate reason to kill him."

_So what's an_ adequate _reason to kill him?_ Felix wanted to ask, surprised to hear that there was any eventuality where Locus would find it acceptable to kill the bastard. But the importance of that information was briefly overshadowed by outrage. " _Misplaced?_ " He twisted around in the chair to glare at him properly. "After—" 

Locus caught him by the chin before he could finish the rest of the outburst. His grip wasn't particularly strong, it actually bordered on kind of weirdly gentle, and he didn't use it to physically shut Felix's mouth on the words he didn't want to hear. But it served the same purpose. Felix stopped talking in surprise, and in the abrupt silence, Locus said firmly, "The future you saw no longer exists." 

There was an argument to be made to that, but Locus was starting to retract his fingers and the tip of his forefinger brushed distractingly against the corner of his mouth. The light, barely there rasp of his rough skin against the sensitive, significantly smoother plane of Felix's lip scattered his thoughts to the far corners of his mind. "That's not..." 

"And it will not come to pass," Locus continued, with all the inexorable inevitably of a supernova. Felix felt his thumb press a little harder into the side of his chin. "He is no threat to you."

He should've quit while he was ahead. As a fresh surge of irritation tore through him, Felix slapped Locus' hand away from his face. "Of course he isn't," he scoffed. "That's fucking insulting." 

Not wanting to acknowledge the way Locus was glowering at him, there was a message in that sour expression and Felix wasn't interested in accepting it, he turned back to the screen. He could still feel the intensity of Locus' gaze like he was trying to bore a hole into the side of his head, but he'd been subjected to that kind of scrutiny so many times over the years that he'd gotten pretty good at pretending he wasn't aware that it was happening.

Maybe he finally managed to be convincing about it, because after enough time had passed for it to become clear that he wasn't going to respond, Locus offered what sounded an awful lot like a comprise, "If he becomes a genuine threat, we will deal with him." 

_Heard this one before._ And this time, he wasn't going to accept it like a gullible idiot. "By killing him," Felix clarified, without looking at him.

"Yes," came his ready agreement. 

_Too_ ready. Felix had heard that before too, in the future from a man who was so much like this one and yet still so very different. It made trying to parse the truth from the ultimately useless intentions a hell of a difficult thing to do. "Do—"

" _No._ " 

There were too many ways for that question to end. Too many things he wanted— _needed_ —to know. All of them might have revolved around a single blond, blue-eyed, obnoxiously handsome theme, but there were too many nuances for Locus to just conveniently sweep them all up into one neat answer. 

"You don't even know what I was going to say," Felix muttered, not sure if he felt more or less put out by the attempt Locus had just made. He _had_ tried to deal with the problem, as unsatisfying as it was, so that probably ought to have earned him a little credit. But it _was_ unsatisfying, which made it well nigh impossible for Felix to be that generous. 

Evidently, Locus didn't share his opinion. "Yes," he said wryly. "I do."

It was possible. _Unlikely_ , but possible. Felix had certainly harangued him enough about what he'd done, both in the past and in the future, with respect to Wash that unless he was a complete moron, he should have known what his major grievances were. Everything in him wanted to push the issue, demand _real_ answers and assurances that wouldn't be conveniently forgotten or discarded the instant a mission went sideways. But he would have had to have been utterly oblivious to reality to fail to notice how... _different…_ Locus was today.

He was being downright personable, insofar as Locus was ever really personable. He'd not just humored Felix's references to sex but had offered hints that he was no longer actively trying to murder his own libido. Perhaps even more tellingly, he hadn't taken a prime opportunity to blame everything that had suddenly gone wrong on Felix. And for the first time, he wouldn't have gotten much pushback about it because Felix knew that he was at fault. Continuing to dog him about Wash had the potential to ruin it all; if Locus was trying something new, if he was trying to resurrect the person he'd been and was giving it a test drive, pissing him off might discourage him from trying it again.

Hard as it was for him to do it, Felix took a deep breath and shoved all of the Wash-related thoughts to the back of his mind. Unfortunately, while he was preoccupied with trying to keep the peace, his mouth slipped the leash. "Why aren't you pissed off?" 

"I am," Locus replied simply, not seeming to be terribly bothered by the question.

"At me," Felix heard himself say. It was so appalling that he nearly slapped his hand over his mouth. _Shut up! What the fuck is wrong with you? Just shut up! It doesn't matter why he isn't pissed off._  

"It isn't your fault."

Felix was already bristling as he glanced up at him. "It isn't—Wait, what?"

_Did he just say what I think he said?_ Those four words were certainly in Locus' vocabulary. Felix had heard him say them a handful of times since he'd met him, always in a tone of vague reassurance and never to him. The temptation to look around the bridge for who he was really talking to was strong. Somehow, Felix resisted.

"We'll deal with them tonight," Locus continued, either ignoring or wholly unaware of Felix's bewilderment. " _After_ we extract the information we need."

That sounded like he meant they were going to kill them. Maybe even torture them for information, if they proved resistant to handing it over. It was very unlike the new unappealing Savior of the Universe Locus, and so very like the old cold-blooded killer Locus, that Felix smiled one of his sharp, vicious smiles. "Damn right we will."

Moving closer, Locus sat down on the arm of Felix's chair. "Pull up the coordinates," he instructed, gesturing toward the message still displayed on the screen. Instead of wedging his arm uncomfortably between his body and the chair, he draped it over the back of it, where Felix's shoulders took the brunt of its weight. "We need to learn all we can about the site that's been chosen for the meeting and we only have a few hours to do it."

Only marginally focused on what he was doing, most of his attention too preoccupied with soaking up the casual contact, Felix keyed in the coordinates that the spook had sent him. "Deal's still on," he muttered, slanting Locus a sideways glance from the corner of his eye. "You know that, right? You can't take it back just because this asshole figured it out for us."

Their eyes met as Locus glanced at him askance, though the angle prevented Felix from trying to decipher the meaning behind it. At least, that was the case right up until Locus' arm shifted and he raked his fingernails up the back of Felix's neck and into his hair. "I didn't intend to."

_Holy fuck._ The hot-cold sensation lit up his scalp as Locus' nails moved over it and shot like a bolt of lightning down his spine. It made the hair stand up on his forearms and a tight, trembling shiver shake through his torso. He took a short, sharp breath in through his nose, poised to—

"Focus," Locus murmured, much too close to his ear, as he smoothed down the hair he'd just ruffled.

It killed him to say it. Absolutely _killed_ him. But if they were going to properly prepare for the ambush, Felix knew that he needed to wrench control of his body back from his dick. Painstakingly, he forced each word out through clenched teeth, "Stop touching me then."

Locus' response was a soft snort filled with unconcealed amusement, but he took his hand out of Felix's hair and settled it down on the back of the chair. Where it sat for a majority of the next five hours—as they researched the area, searched for satellite images to better map it out, and analyzed as many possible outcomes as they could come up with between them—a hairsbreadth from his shoulder.

* * *

The spook told them to be there at 2200, but they arrived at 2030, half expecting to find the area already occupied and the enemy waiting for them. It was a wide open space out in the middle of the desert, kilometers from any inhabited areas. There were no places to hide; no rock formations, no depressions in the ground, no scrubby trees or cacti. Just flat, boring rocky soil with absolutely nowhere to conceal anything. And they were the only ones there.

They parked the shuttle about a kilometer from the coordinates they were given and walked the rest of the way. Felix thought it was a stupid fucking thing to do, but Locus insisted that it would demonstrate their cooperation with the demand to come unarmed. Anyone with even a modicum of sense would see a shuttle sitting too close to the meeting site and assume it had been weaponized. And it hadn't been. Much to Felix's consternation, there wasn't even a knife hidden in it.

It wasn't the first time they'd walked into a hostile situation without weapons, but it might have been the most nerve-wracking.

Felix often claimed that he and Locus were the best, which wasn't an exaggeration. They _were_ the best. But they weren't going up against two-bit thugs or career criminals. Outside of Spartans, ONI operatives were the most impressively trained agents humanity had. They had the best weapons, the best tech, and training in all variants of the martial arts. And now that the war had been over for a few years, he figured that they were probably incorporating Sangheili and Jiralhanae techniques into their repertoire, too. 

At the moment, they were walking into a situation where they were outnumbered, outgunned, and not nearly as knowledgeable about the area or the planet as they should have been for this kind of operation. Felix knew they weren't going to be able to swan in, effortlessly kill most of the agents, and take control of the meeting. It was going to be dangerous. Perhaps more dangerous than anything he'd done in years. And after dying twice, avoiding it a third time, and maybe making significant progress in getting Locus back, he damn well wasn't going to let some military asshole steal it all away from him.

"Looks like we got here too early," Felix said, hands on his hips, as he surveyed the empty desert stretching out in every direction.

With no artificial light seeping in from the surrounding countryside, there was only the moon—full and gleaming a brilliant white—and a profusion of stars to provide them with illumination. But their eyes had adjusted to the darkness on the walk. They could see well enough with what nature had provided. And it wasn't like there was anything nearby to cast shadows anyway.

Locus made a low sound that might have been agreement or could have just been acknowledgement that he'd heard him. Felix glanced over at him, but he was scanning the horizon, obviously not satisfied with the view.

They were both wearing deceptively casual clothes. _Normal_ clothes. Long-sleeved t-shirts that were fitted enough to show they weren't hiding anything beneath them yet so stretchy that their movement wouldn't be hindered. Pants made of some flexible fabric that mimicked the appearance of jeans and hugged their legs and hips, conspicuously calling attention to the noticeable lack of bulges where handguns and knives might be. Shoes that laced up at the ankle for support and had enough tread on the soles to give them all the traction they might require.

"Stay alert," Locus said softly. "They'll be here soon."

_Easier said than done_ , Felix thought, heaving an aggravated sigh. There was absolutely _nothing_ to do. No perimeters to try to secure. No approaching hostiles to ferret out. Nothing to set up. No one to spy on. He couldn't even try to ply Locus with conversation to pass the time. Locus was too no-nonsense and focused to engage in meaningless chatter and for once, Felix knew better than to start pestering him. It was possible, however unlikely, that something had been set up out there to eavesdrop on them or record what they said. One could never be too cautious when ONI was involved.

While Locus stood there still and silent, almost serene in his utter lack of movement, Felix paced. He kept close to Locus, ready to dart back across whatever minimal distance existed between them should their unknown host decide to put in an appearance early, but he had too much energy to burn and no other way to expend it. By the time he'd made about two dozen loops around him, Felix expected Locus to snap at him to stop, but he said nothing. Barely even acknowledged him.

After a while, the inaction and the silence wore on him so much that he couldn't stand it anymore. Adrenaline was still streaming through his body, making him jittery and anxious without a suitable outlet. 

"Seriously," he said to Locus, coming to a halt beside him. "We're way too fucking early."

"Actually," said a voice that most certainly was _not_ Locus, "you're about an hour too late."

About four meters ahead of them, a man materialized out of nowhere. One minute, he wasn't there and the next, he was standing there as if he'd been in that spot all along. Locus stiffened, the subtle movement proof that he'd been caught off-guard by the man's sudden appearance. Felix's hand itched to reach for a weapon that wasn't there, but at the last second, he managed to keep it at his side.

The man didn't move closer to them. He stayed where he was, arms loosely folded over his chest, but his gaze was sharp, assessing as it raked over them both. His posture was confident without being tense; the stance of a man who knew he was in full control of a volatile situation. That he wasn't reaching for the firearm holstered at his hip meant he wasn't feeling particularly threatened.

_You should be_ , Felix thought darkly, studying him in turn. _You fucking should be threatened. I'm going to tear you apart._

He wasn't anyone Felix had ever seen before. The distance made it slightly difficult to accurately estimate his height and the bulky shape of his tactical gear and what was undoubtedly a bulletproof vest concealed the true shape of his body. Fit, clearly, but whether there was a lot of muscle under there or someone built more like Felix was impossible to determine. His face was nondescript and unremarkable, as painfully average as his standard military haircut. It was an ageless sort of face, and as expressionless as it was, there was no hope of using laugh lines to hazard a guess at how old he might have been. Even his voice was unfamiliar and forgettable.

The perfect spook, Felix realized. The sort of person who could get into anywhere and be so utterly forgettable that no one would pay any attention to him. He could see everything, hear everything, and be gone before anyone really knew that he was there in the first place.

"You were observing us," Locus said flatly. "Why?"

"The two of you have quite a reputation," the guy said matter-of-factly. "I was curious to see what you'd do."

_Awfully straightforward of you_. Felix hadn't taken his eyes off of him since he'd appeared, but he knew that the spook wasn't alone. He couldn't see anyone else, of course. The agents who'd come with him hadn't revealed themselves. But Felix could feel them watching him as keenly as he could sense the guns pointed at him.

"And your associates remain concealed because you don't want us to know how many you've brought with you," Locus returned, also matter-of-factly.

Felix had to suppress the impulse to smirk. Agent Asshole thought he was hot shit, taking them by surprise the way that he had. _You only get to do it once. Should've used the advantage while you had it. You won't get it again._

Asshole gave a negligent shrug with one shoulder. "Unarmed doesn't mean you aren't dangerous."

Something about the whole thing was bothering Felix. It had started as a faint prickle, quickly dismissed as uneasy discomfort when the guy had turned up out of thin air. But it hadn't gone away while he and Locus were drawing lines in the sand. It was wriggling deeper into Felix's brain, sinking its teeth and claws into him and screaming at him to _pay attention._

It wasn't the banter. The banter was to be expected, both sides sizing the other up, subtly trying to get a proper read of the situation. The spook clearly knew that he wasn't dealing with ordinary mercenaries. Otherwise he wouldn't have taken such great pains to keep the upper hand. And that knowledge wasn't it, either. The message he had sent Felix had effectively communicated the fact that the guy knew more about them than they knew about him.

"You wanted to meet with us," Locus was saying. "We're here. What do you want?"

It wasn't the invisible, unknown number of agents, though that didn't sit very well with Felix either. And it wasn't the... _Invisible._ It was like a literal itch and he didn't know how to scratch it, except to try to chase it down and puzzle through it. _Like a cloaking device. Except these things aren’t powered by suits of special armor. They’re personal fucking cloaking devices. Easy to hide, easy to transport. A hell of a lot better than Locus' camouflage._

The itch got stronger. Locus liked to be invisible. And presumably this was the guy who'd been supplying him with tech in the future. But he hadn't given Locus anything like a personal cloaking device. Why? If ONI had them _now_ , it wasn’t like they would still be cutting edge technology later. They wouldn’t be monitored. Pilfering one from the organization’s supply wouldn’t send up any red flags. Why wouldn’t the guy have given one of the things to Locus? It would've been a lot more convenient for all that infiltrating of Alvaro's properties he'd been doing than that stupid face-changing thing.

The face-changing thing that had rendered Locus unrecognizable while he'd been wearing it. Unrecognizable. Nondescript. _Forgettable._

_Got you, motherfucker._

"Take it off," Felix snapped, cutting through whatever bullshit the spook was preparing to give Locus in answer to his question.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Locus glance at him. But his attention was too focused on the spook to return it. Because there was more to what was going on than the obvious, Felix just _knew_ it. And the disturbingly intense way the asshole was staring at him seemed to confirm that suspicion. "Excuse me?"

Felix scowled at him. "That thing on your face.” And in case that was still too confusing, he pointed at him. “I know you're wearing it. You want something from us, take it off and deal with us directly. None of this cloak and dagger bullshit."

Between the distance and the darkness, it was difficult to be sure, but Felix thought he saw the guy's eyebrow rise. "I don't think so."

_Like I care what you think._ Felix opened his mouth to say something to that effect, but Locus beat him to it.

"Then the meeting's over." Without turning his back on him, Locus tipped his head. "Let's go, Felix."

Asshole took a step forward. "You think I'm going to let you leave?"

Locus gave him a long, level stare. "If you know as much about us as you think you do," he said coolly, with all the implacability of an avalanche, "then you know what will happen if you try to stop us."

In that moment, it was as if all of that talk of becoming someone else had never happened and Locus was still the implacable killing machine that Felix had lived and fought beside for nearly two decades. And maybe he always would be. He might change, might stop killing people that he didn’t think deserved it, might try to become some interstellar hero for the weak and pathetic, but maybe the killer would always be there, too. Lurking in the depths of Locus’ mind, concealed under the veneer of goodness he kept saying he wanted to cultivate, waiting for a target that would make it rise into the light and exact the kind of violent mayhem that never failed to make Felix’s blood burn.  

Might not be easy, but _maybe_ he could work with that.

“You’re some big shot ONI agent and you don’t know the basics of Informants One-Oh-One?” Felix asked rhetorically, before continuing on with snide sarcasm. “It’s called building trust. You need to do that if you’re not willing to try to torture the info out of someone.”

Agent Asshole was looking at them, his unremarkable face unreadable. After what felt like an hour and was in reality probably only a few seconds, he muttered something under his breath that sounded to Felix an awful lot like, "Won't be the worst mistake I ever made."

It was a ballsy assumption, thinking that he was going to get out of this encounter both alive _and_ with the certainty that Felix and Locus wouldn't hunt him down and kill him after they knew who he really was. Granted, there was a high possibility that Locus would be satisfied by however the meeting ended and would have such a severe attack of hero that he wouldn't want to kill the guy, but Felix already knew Agent Asshole was a dead man walking. He'd seen _their_ faces and he knew too much about who they really were. There was no future in which the guy continued breathing for too much longer after the meeting adjourned.

Asshole sighed, then reached up and made that same motion Felix remembered seeing Locus make in the future. The one where he just sort of wiped his face away. And underneath it was—

Millions of kilometers away, Felix heard the dim, distant sound of Locus taking a sharp, harsh breath. But it was too far away. Too disconnected. Too irrelevant. Because the fissures that had spent years spidering through the foundations of his composure were crumbling too fast, cracking and breaking and bringing the whole fucking thing crashing down.

" _You motherfucking son of a bitch!_ " The snarl tore out of him like a feral thing, wild and enraged. He couldn't see through the fury of it. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't see anything but that motherfucking bastard standing in front of him like he hadn't destroyed everything that had ever mattered.

" _Felix!_ " Locus was shouting his name.

Something hard was biting into his arm. It jerked him backward, made him scramble to keep his footing. He struggled against it, fighting the pull of it, wrenching his shoulder and barely feeling it beyond a twinge that quickly faded into nothing. _I'm going to fucking kill you!_ He might have said it. Might have just thought it. There was a deafening roar in his ears that was making it impossible to hear anything.

Locus was yelling something again. Felix could feel the vibration of his voice deep in the marrow of his bones, but he ignored it. _Had_ to ignore it. Because that son of bitch was still standing there, still watching them, still fucking gloating over what he'd—

Pain exploded like a brilliant, shattering burst of fireworks going off in his head. It startled him into stillness, made him blink and actually _see_ Locus standing there, half beside him and half in front of him. In that abrupt moment of shocked clarity, he could feel Locus' arm locked around him, keeping him pinned against him. Felt the tourniquet-like grip of Locus' hand on his arm, bruising flesh and muscle and making his fingers go numb. Realized, as Locus' other hand took hold him by the throat and forced him to look at him, that he'd punched him in the face. 

" _Stop it_ ," Locus hissed, sounding all _wrong_. Furious but not actually furious. Something else. Something his brain had to sidestep without naming.

And it only took Felix glancing beyond his shoulder to know _why._ Just seeing him standing there, watching them, poised like he was going to do more damage than he'd already done, made the madness come back, made his lips skim back from his teeth in a snarl.

" _Isaac,_ " Locus snapped, shaking him, and Felix's eyes jerked back to him. When he saw that he had his attention, he continued, voice lower yet no less urgent. "This isn't helping."

Felix stared at him, unable to believe Locus was going to have the audacity to try to make anything about it _his_ fault. " _He—_ "

"I know," Locus spoke over him, tightening his grip like he fully intended to strangle him into silence. "And I need you to _calm down_ so we can deal with it."

Oh, they were absolutely going to deal with it. There was no doubt about that. They were going to deal with it so completely that no trace of that lying, traitorous son of a bitch would ever, _ever_ be found. And when they were done scattering his molecules across the galaxy, Felix would find every person who had ever had contact with him, every friend, every acquaintance, anyone who had seen his face or heard his name and helped him perpetuate the lie, and he would kill them. Kill them, kill their families. And _oh_ , how he was going to fucking _savor_ the slaughter.

Almost as if he could read his thoughts, Locus gave him another shake. It broke Felix's concentration and drew his attention again, just as he knew it had been meant to do. Locus tipped his chin down, bringing his face subtly closer, leaving him no choice but to stare back at him.

"Calm. Down." Each word was a sentence, painstakingly enunciated and slowly spoken. Locus paused for a moment, eyeing him, waiting for acknowledgement of the order that never quite manifested. He gave him another short, jerky shake. "Are you with me?"

_Don’t fucking tell me to calm down._ Because he wasn’t calm. He was the furthest from calm he’d been since the day Locus had gotten that scar carved into his face. But it was really damn hard to resist him saying things like _I need you to_ and _are you with me?_ He licked his lips, absently trying to work some moisture back into them.

“Yeah.” It was hoarse and not as steady as it could have been, but it was the best he could do. “Yeah, I’m here.”

Locus gave him another long, intent stare, then nodded and very slowly let him go. Felix twitched, every instinct in his body demanding that he act _now_ , but he clenched his jaw and didn’t move, save for the sideways slide of his gaze toward the man who, a lifetime ago, had once been something like a friend.

“Got a little crazier since the last time I saw you, huh?” Mason Wu asked with a lightness that was extremely inappropriate for the situation, arching an eyebrow in what was either meant as humor or mockery.

Felix bristled, baring his teeth at him again, but Locus intervened, placing a hand on his arm as he said evenly, "We thought you were dead."

Whatever that was on Wu's face disappeared, leaving in its place that familiar solemnity he only ever got when he was talking to Locus. He had never taken Felix seriously enough for it. "I know."

Locus took a step forward, his hand falling away from Felix. "We went back."

"I know."

"And Megan. The kids." Locus wasn't speaking any faster. The tone of his voice wasn't changing. The volume hadn't increased. But Felix still glanced at him, tensing. "We looked. We found them."

Very softly, Wu repeated, "I know."

_And you don't fucking care_ , Felix thought furiously, wanting to snarl the words at him. He started to open his mouth to do it, too, but something made him close it again before he made a sound. Some strange, inexplicable understanding that this was something that Locus needed to do.

Locus hadn't moved closer than that single step and his voice remained steady and level, possibly because of their unseen audience or maybe just because he wasn't willing to show emotion to a traitor. But an edge snuck into it as he concluded deliberately, "We got retribution."

"I _know_ , Sam."

Standing at his side, Felix couldn't see Locus' expression properly, though he did notice the tightening at the corner of his eye at the use of his name. In public. Surrounded by unknown hostiles who might use it to uncover more information about them. If, of course, Wu hadn't already spilled all their secrets.

"Why?" For all that it was phrased like a question, it wasn’t one. It was a demand.

If it had been Felix who had said it, Wu probably would have shot back something sarcastic. But because it was Locus, he bypassed all of the bullshit for sincerity. "Because I didn't have a choice."

_Oh, please_. Felix didn't scoff outright where the bastard could hear him, but he snorted softly in disbelief. _This isn't our first rodeo, motherfucker. If you think we're going to let you off that easily, you're a bigger idiot than I always thought you were._

To his surprise, Wu didn't just leave it there with that half-assed attempt to pass the responsibility off on someone else. He kept talking, though he had the audacity to sound _regretful_. "Naval Intelligence already had agents planted in the cartel, trying to source the connections it had with Covenant sympathizers. Those guys the boss sent to that warehouse? Dumb luck it was undercover agents. They saved my life." He tipped a shoulder, almost like he was trying to shrug it off but thought better about the gesture before he completed it. "Offered me a position later, after they got a hold of my old service file and I was conscious enough to have a conversation with them."

Felix glanced at Locus to see how he was reacting to all of it, but it was impossible to tell. His profile was too hard, like his face had been carved from stone and the sculptor hadn't the skill to work emotion into his non-expression. And trying to figure it out would involve moving around to face him directly, which would draw entirely too much attention from the enemy to what he was doing. Whatever was going on in there, Locus was on his own and Felix was going to have to wait until they were somewhere private to start trying to clean up the mess.

"But it meant going dark," Wu was saying, drawing Felix's grudging attention back in his direction. "Leaving no trace that I was still alive. They took care of it. Produced a body. Made it look like the cartel ordered a hit on Megan and the kids, too. Wiped us from the records, gave us new identities."

Something passed over his face. Regret again? Maybe something stronger, like remorse? Felix couldn't identify it and it wasn't directed at him anyway. Wu was speaking exclusively to Locus now, like he wasn't even standing there. "I wanted to tell you, but that wasn't possible. _No one_ could know. So I kept tabs on you with my new resources. Followed your actions." He lifted his hands in what was probably supposed to be a placating manner. "Strictly off the books. It was my project, not ONI's. That's why we're here right now."

Objectively, it was a believable story. It sounded like something ONI would do. Especially once one of the higher ups realized how valuable a resource someone like Wu would be to the organization. But whether it was believable or not wasn't really the point. Felix didn't _care_ about what happened or why. It was enough that it had happened. It was enough that Wu had perpetuated the lie. It was more than enough that he had watched them fall apart _because of him_ and hadn't done a goddamn thing to stop it.

"Why's that?" Felix challenged him, not inclined to wait for Locus to figure out how he wanted to respond to that. "So you can stir up the past? Try to ruin our lives again?"

It got his attention. Wu met his eyes, icy and so disappointed that it bordered on disgust. "So I can figure out who the hell you are, because I sure as fuck don't recognize you anymore." His gaze cut away from Felix and settled on Locus again, and this time, it was Wu who took the step forward. "A civil war, Sam?" Now the disappointment was born of sorrow and weariness. "Killing innocent people for a paycheck? _Civilians?_ " He shook his head. "What the hell happened to you?"

_Don't you fucking dare_. If there had been one benefit to Wu's _death_ , it had been that he hadn't been around anymore to ply Locus with his holier-than-thou lectures about decency and goodness. The diatribes themselves were easy enough to tune out, but the way he often looked pointedly at Felix in the middle of them, like he was the source of all that was wrong with the universe and Locus would have been so much better off without him, grated on him and ratcheted up the paranoia until he wanted to scream. Locus had never seemed to agree with him, not where the insinuations about Felix were concerned, but just because he hadn't done it hadn't meant that he never would. _That_ had only been a matter of time.

And now he was doing it again. Suddenly returned to life after years of supposed death and already he was trying to worm his way in between them and cast doubt on Felix's place in Locus' life. Which, thanks to Wash, there was enough of that already.

Before he could step in and shut it down, Locus took care of it. "That isn't why we're here."

It would have been nice to think that he was doing it because he was just as tired of hearing Wu heap the blame at Felix's feet, but Felix knew better. It had nothing to do with him and everything to do with Wu trying to force this conversation in front of his agents. Locus barely talked about personal matters in private. He never did it in public.

"That's _exactly_ why we're here," Wu countered immediately. "I need to know what the two of you are doing poking around New Phoenix. I need to know why he's—" He jabbed at finger in Felix's direction. "—hinting around at things he shouldn't know anything about. And I need to know whose side you're on here. Because word out of Chorus is that it's the wrong one."

If Locus was moved by that speech, he didn't show it. "We quit the mission," he told him flatly.

"After you fomented civil war across an entire planet and nearly used a highly classified device to commit genocide."

Something tight crept into Locus' voice, like he was starting to lose patience with the accusations. "The Purge was destroyed before it was activated."

"No thanks to you." Wu shook his head a moment later, then dismissed the topic with a short flick of his wrist. "Your actions on Chorus prove you're a threat to humanity, and right now, we've got enough of those to deal with. So you either answer my questions or I remove you from the field."

Whether it was a threat to imprison them or kill them wasn't clear, but in the end, it didn't matter. It was a threat. One that had enough of a chance at succeeding that it wasn't completely empty. And as far as Felix was concerned, there was only one reasonable response to that. But as he started to move, barely more than a preparatory tensing of his muscles, Locus made a small, quelling motion with two of his fingers without so much as glancing in his direction.

"We could have stayed to fight, but we abandoned the mission. You know this. Your sources have been accurate about everything else. They would have told you about that as well," Locus told him plainly, certainty making his tone confident and matter-of-fact. "That alone ought to answer your questions."

Like he was taking shots at targets instead of having a conversation, Wu replied, "A couple years ago, it would've."

Because he wasn't internalizing the attack on their morality, or lack thereof, the way that he suspected Locus was doing, Felix was the first to realize where he was going with it. At least, he was the first to verbally acknowledge it. Maybe Locus had already figured it out and was just stringing Wu along. "You think we're part of it, don’t you? The whole conspiracy or whatever the hell it is with this asshole and these guns. That’s why you’re so bent out of shape about it.”

Wu gave him a flat look. "Given your past actions, it certainly seems like the most reasonable conclusion."

"Many of those actions were wrong," Locus told him, likely foreseeing the unflattering remarks Felix was on the verge of making about his sudden change of heart. "That is what Chorus taught me. We left because I wished to stop the killing."

"You killed three of my best men," Wu replied, voice hovering between sarcastic and carefully neutral.

Felix openly scoffed at that. "Your standards are slipping."

"Gates..." It was a low growl, not quite a snarl.

Unperturbed by the attempted censure, Felix shrugged. "They deserved it."

"They had families," Wu snapped back.

_Let me guess. Friends of yours? Boo fucking hoo._ "Then they should've thought about those _families_ before they threatened to kill Locus." 

"It was a _threat_." _And that_ , Felix thought, rolling his eyes, _is a stupid argument._ But Wu either didn't see it or ignored him, because he continued hotly, "They weren't authorized to do it." 

A razor-sharp, icy smile cut across his mouth. "Threaten him, Wu," Felix whispered silkily, pitching it so that it would carry far enough to reach him. "See how far _you_ get." 

Maybe it had been so long that Wu couldn't remember what that tone meant, but Locus obviously did. The words had barely gotten out of his mouth before he heard the quiet, albeit firm command, "Don't." 

Shaking his head, Wu said, voice practically dripping with disgust, "This is exactly what I'm talking about. You don't—" 

"We have reason to believe that Santos Alvaro will be approached by an unknown source," Locus cut in, and it was so reminiscent of the old days, him playing reluctant mediator to their bickering, that Felix felt a pang of something he could only assume was nostalgia. "That source will provide him with alien weaponry that he will seek to replicate and mass produce. Due to that weaponry's similarity to what was used on the population of New Phoenix, we came to Earth in hope of finding information about the source." 

"Because you want exclusive access to that weaponry?" 

Even from where he was standing, Felix could see Locus' frown. "Because apprehending Alvaro will do nothing to stop the proliferation of that weapon if the source simply finds someone else to do it." 

Somehow, Wu looked even more unconvinced now. "You came here to _stop_ the production of an extraordinarily dangerous weapon?" 

"Yes." 

"Why?" 

There were half a dozen responses Felix could have given to that question, all of them incendiary in one way or another, and in the interest of not earning Locus' ire by manufacturing an excuse to kill his former partner, he kept his mouth shut. Locus wanted to play diplomat, he was welcome to field Wu's bullshit. But that didn't stop Felix from rolling his eyes and crossing his arms over his chest.  

"Thousands of people will die during the development of that weapon." Locus didn't exactly sound _passionate_ about it, but there was an undercurrent of vehemence in his voice that suggested that the topic might be one he _could_ feel that way about. If he could figure out how emotions worked, anyway, and if he was successful in dredging up the remains of his personality from whatever dark place he'd consigned it. "Untold numbers afterward if Alvaro is successful. He must not be." 

It looked like Wu was considering it. Or at the very least, taking him seriously. There was a thoughtfulness about his expression that Felix dimly recognized from years past. "And you know about all of this how?" 

Locus glanced at Felix, who read it as the figurative passing of the baton that it was. _This is your fucking crusade. Not mine. I shouldn't have to defend it._ But Locus was still looking at him and he could feel Wu's attention shifting. The muscle in Felix's jaw contracted as he glowered at an indistinct point of middle ground between the two of them. _You're such a goddamn asshole._  

"I told him." Lifting his chin, Felix fixed Wu with a flinty stare. "I saw the fruits of Alvaro's labor firsthand." It looked like he was about to open his mouth. Pretty sure that he knew what was coming, Felix continued, "Four years from now. Saw all the intel you were feeding Locus about it. In the future." 

"The future," Wu repeated, deadpan. 

"Pretty big coincidence, me knowing how to bait your lying ass out of hiding, huh?" Felix shot back. 

"And you went to the future how, exactly?" 

_Nice try._ "None of your business." And because he remembered the way Wu got whenever he thought he was in the right about something, Felix added, in as close an approximation of Locus' unyielding tone as he could replicate, "You wanted to know why we came here. That's why. I took a trip into the future, I saw some shit, I came back, and now Locus wants to take care of it." 

Wu laughed, a light chuckle under his breath that sounded more like he was exhaling than expressing true laughter. "You can't possibly think I'm going to believe this." 

"It doesn't matter if you believe it," Locus returned, impressively impassive about Wu's disbelief. The show of support wasn't too shabby either. "What matters is that we're successful in locating the source before the weapon can be passed on to Alvaro or anyone else." 

"You have to give me something else. Something better than Gates going to the future."

Wu looked at him as he said it, then shook his head and turned his gaze, almost beseechingly, back to Locus. "You know how that sounds."

"I don't _have_ to do anything." Locus' posture was already impeccably straight, but in that moment, it almost seemed like he managed to stand up a little straighter. "You wanted to know why we came to Earth. We've told you. Now we're just wasting time. This meeting is over." 

"No, it isn't." 

Felix couldn't read Locus' expression any better now than he could when Wu had revealed himself. Not even when Locus looked at him, giving him a full view instead of the partial glimpse he'd been working with, could he make sense of it. Whatever he was thinking was locked too firmly behind a mask of cool, flat neutrality. 

"Let's go," he said quietly. 

And then, despite the knowledge that there were military agents arrayed invisibly around them and a former ally armed and displeased with them right there in front of them, Locus turned his back on Wu and started off in the direction of the shuttle. Knowing that his back must have been crawling with the anticipation of bullets, Felix shot Wu a nasty smile, spun around, and followed. 

"We aren't done here!" the son of a bitch said sharply from behind them. 

"So shoot us," Locus volleyed back indifferently, knowing as well as Felix did that that challenge would go unanswered.

Because of course Wu wouldn't do it. The trouble he'd gone through to arrange the meeting notwithstanding, _Mason Wu_ , for all of his duplicity, wasn't the sort of person who would shoot a former friend in the back without just provocation. And refusing to answer questions wasn't justifiable. If it had just been Felix, maybe. It wouldn't have surprised him in the least to have felt the sharp, burning impact of a high-caliber round between the shoulder blades. But Locus had drawn a line at the insinuation that everything had been Felix's fault, making it impossible for Wu to have him shot without retaliation. 

The silence held for a few meters. Then, before they passed out of earshot and he would have had to really yell, Wu called out, equal parts concession and warning, "Give me a reason and I will." 

No one followed them. No bullets dogged their steps. After that last remark, silence fell like a shroud over them. Neither Felix nor Locus looked back at the man they left behind and neither spoke to the other. What was going on inside of Locus was impossible to know, but something dangerous and ugly was brewing inside Felix, like a roiling cloud that was teetering between a thunderstorm and a tornado. 

It was a bitter, furious thing that needed an outlet for release. He could feel it pounding in his chest, seeking escape from the confines of his ribs, and clawing at the base of his throat. His fingers itched with the need to destroy something and every step he took was a leaden thing that jolted up through his leg at every impact his foot made with the ground and set his teeth on edge. It would've been so easy to turn back and hunt Wu down, bait out his agents with a feint and systematically murder them all.  

_Why_ was irrelevant. He didn't bother trying to chase down a reason for the way he was feeling. Years of fighting to breathe against the suffocating weight of fear. Years of struggling to keep a hold of Locus as he slipped and twisted through his fingers. Years of trying to shore up the crumbling foundations of his world. It could've been any of it. It could've been all of it. Identifying the cause wouldn't erase the past. 

What mattered was sating the writhing, raging thing inside of him so that he could think again. So that he could breathe without feeling like he was going to fly apart if he took too deep of a breath. 

How he made it back to the shuttle, he would never remember. The blur of darkness and moonlight and bone-rattling footsteps shifted and swirled and resolved into a marginally comfortable chair and the blinking lights of the dashboard as the shuttle powered up. A quick sideways glance revealed Locus in the pilot's seat, prepping the shuttle for take-off with motions so smooth he was probably doing it on mental autopilot. His face was still as unreadable as it had been in the desert. 

The only sounds in the cockpit were the soft taps of Locus' fingers and the low hum as the engines came online. Everything else was quiet. Motionless. And into the stillness came the clamoring riot of Felix's thoughts. 

Wu was alive. He was going to try to pin all of the blame for what they'd become onto Felix. He was going to convince Locus to ditch him. Join up with ONI, maybe. Turn Locus into one of his agents. _Wouldn't that just be fucking great? Locus and Siris back together again. Maybe they could get fucking Wash to join them. Maybe he already has._ Because Wu had known what was happening on Chorus. Someone had to have been feeding him information. _Undercover agent? A fucking Freelancer? Not one of the sims. Too stupid. Not worth ONI's time. But a Freelancer?_ They could have been in on it together. Which might explain how Wash knew the right things to say to Locus to get under his skin. _Fucking Siris whispering in his ear, telling him how to turn Locus against me. But I can stop this. It's not too late. I can use this. I can make him_ —

"Say something." The demand seemed to echo through the small space, almost startlingly loud. Felix let the silence pour in for a moment, then darted another glance Locus' way and found him looking at him. 

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. It doesn't matter." He waved his hand around like that would help explain what he wanted to hear. "The weather. Our ETA. Earth trivia. The fact that your best friend just came back from the dead."

That hadn't been what he'd intended to say, but once it was out there, he couldn't take it back. And he didn't really want to, either. After his _death_ , Siris had always been the topic Felix had never known how to broach. It was too volatile. Too... Too hard. Too uncomfortable. Too awkward a thing to talk about because he didn't know _how_ to do it. His own feelings on the issue were a complicated, contradictory mess and as Locus started to withdraw and change, the further away he got, the harder it was to reach him.

But they were going to have to talk about it now. Silence had destroyed them once. If there was any hope of history not repeating itself, they couldn't be silent. And Felix knew, deep down in the marrow of his bones, that if Wash was sitting in the co-pilot's seat instead of him, that son of a bitch would be trying to talk about it.

Judging from the way Locus' brow furrowed almost immediately, the perfect fucking Freelancer would have been more tactful about it. "Felix..."

There were too many ways that could end and none of them were good. Defensively, he hurriedly talked over him. "What? It's something we have to talk about, right? I mean, the last time something happened with that asshole we didn't talk about it and you went crazy. Which was bad. So let's fucking talk about it now."

As he watched, Locus took a deep breath. "You don't think you're oversimplifying it a little?" 

"No." Felix scowled at him. "Trying to become a robot isn't exactly _sane_ , Sam."

Locus took his attention off the flight controls long enough to give him a look of vaguely annoyed exasperation. "We _both_ went crazy."

Not about to cop to that, Felix arched an eyebrow. "Is that what's happening? Are you flipping out? Because I can't tell."

"I wasn't the one about to kill him," Locus muttered under his breath, turning back to the console.

Felix could feel his lips thinning into a snarl as the anger, carefully banked, flared back up. "He _lied_ to us! He was alive the whole fucking time and let us think he was dead!" 

With Locus' face in profile, he could only see the side of his mouth twist down into a frown, but it was pronounced enough that he could read it just fine. Even if Locus didn't want to admit it, that had hurt him. Felix could _see_ it. And that just made him furious. 

"I can finish the job." Were it not for the blinding rage, that pronouncement would have been louder than a hiss. "After what he's done to us, he deserves it. His whole fucking family deserves it."

"No," Locus said immediately, the word practically bitten off.

"Why not? He's been dead to us for years. It won't make any damn difference if fiction becomes reality."

Locus looked at him sharply, his expression far from pleased. "That's enough, Isaac."

_Un-fucking-believable._ Affronted, Felix glowered at him, equally displeased. "Are you really going to defend that motherfucker? After everything he did to us?"

"We did it to ourselves." Locus held his gaze for a few more seconds, then looked back at the controls with a grating air of dismissal. "And I can't really blame him."

"Excuse me?" _This_ right here was why Felix never wanted to talk about anything. Locus always dredged up bullshit excuses for everyone else, with little to no regard for what they'd actually done to them, and yet was as quick to heap blame on Felix for every little thing as ancient gunslingers were said to have been on the draw. "You want to share that reasoning with the rest of the class?"

With a heavy sigh, Locus glanced at him again. "He did it to protect his family."

Which meant precisely nothing to Felix, who was too focused on what Wu's actions had done to them to spare half a damn for his stupid family. "So what? We were _partners_. You don't betray your partners."

An ominous silence emanated from Locus' side of the cockpit. Felix gave him a hard, narrow-eyed glare, trying and failing to parse why he wasn't receiving immediate agreement. Because for all that they'd always clashed about so many other things, the sanctity of partnership was the one thing they'd agreed on.

Sure, Felix would have happily shot Siris in the face if it had meant saving Locus' life, but Locus was the exception to the rule. He had been since the moment Felix had met him. In any situation that wouldn't force a choice between them, he would've had the sanctimonious asshole's back for the simple fact that despite his many, _many_ faults, Siris had been their partner. And Locus held to that code more strictly than Felix. So much so that he'd had the audacity to try to extend it to fucks like Sharkface and the incompetent pirates.

"If it meant protecting mine," Locus said quietly, after the silence started to grow suffocating. "I would do the same."

It was such an unexpected, vicious slap to the face that Felix sucked in a sharp, involuntary breath. Words abandoned him. Locus wouldn't meet his eyes, feigning utter absorption with the laughably simple task of getting the shuttle airborne. Felix sat there, frozen in shock and struggling futilely against the paralysis that kept his muscles locked and his mind filled with white noise.

Of all the things Locus could have done to him, this was likely the worst. Worse than even standing idly by and watching him get killed, because at least at the end of that, Felix would have been put out of his misery. Locus wasn't just talking about betraying him. He was talking about betraying him and then _abandoning_ him for people who didn't actually exist and sure as hell never would, if Felix had anything to say about it. And he would say it as eloquently as bullets and blades allowed, should anyone dare to try to wriggle their way into Locus' life. 

He felt nauseated and breathless all at once, like the bottom had dropped out of the shuttle at the same time as the air had gotten sucked out of it. He couldn't breathe. He wanted to throw up. Through it all was the fury, twisting and slipping through his body and his mind, white-hot and icy all at once. And something else, too. Some yawning, dark, bottomless thing that he couldn't dwell on lest it consume him.

All too clearly, Felix could see himself jamming one of his knives into the side of Locus' neck and tearing out his throat with it. He could do it, too. Locus probably wouldn't see it coming and by the time he did, the blade would be piercing flesh and muscle and any movement he made would do Felix's work for him. _You're mine. You'll always be mine. I'll kill you before I let anyone take you away from me._

Maybe he _should_ do it. Kill Locus. Put an end to the turbulence and uncertainty once and for all. He could go after Wash next. Pay him back for what he'd done. And when that was done, when he was satisfied that he paid the bastard back for Chorus and the future that would never be, he could sate his vengeance on Wu. It'd be such a simple thing to do, too. The wife and kids, Locus' precious idea of family, made Wu weak and crippled, easy prey for someone as merciless as Felix.

Dimly, he realized that he was reaching for a knife that wasn’t there.

Felix took a quick breath, flexed his fingers a few times to shake the impulse out of them, and pushed up out of the chair. The swift movement made Locus dart a look his way and catching it, Felix growled at him, " _Try_ it. Just fucking _try_ to betray me. I will cut you and your pathetic little _family_ down before you get the chance."

Locus frowned and started to say something, but Felix turned his back on him and stormed out of the cockpit. It was that or linger long enough to lose control of himself and actually find some way to kill the bastard. He was angry, sure, but he wasn't _quite_ that far gone yet. Now that he knew what would make Locus to turn on him, he could take precautions against it. He would monitor the people Locus interacted with, who he got close to, who he let inside his unscalable walls, and he would systematically kill each and every one of them before they cemented themselves at Locus' side.

_No one_ was going to take what was his. Not while he was alive.

He stayed in the back of the shuttle for the rest of the ride back to the ship, seething and running through his options. Locus always claimed that he never bothered to think ahead, but when the cause was a worthy one, he could put that anal-retentive asshole to shame with his deft planning skills. It gave him something to do that wasn't dwelling on the revelations of the evening. That would come later, after he had come up with a concrete strategy for eliminating all of his potential competition. The Locus issue was too distracting; he would need all of his mental resources to tackle the problem that Wu presented.

The shuttle reached the ship without incident and as soon as it touched down in the hangar, Felix made his escape, knowing Locus was going to want to argue with him and not wanting any parts of it. An argument would escalate quickly, and with the way he was feeling, he knew he was too dangerous to try to navigate a confrontation without resorting to violence. In the heat of the moment, he might want to kill Locus, but underneath the anger, he knew that when it cooled, he wouldn't be happy about following through with the whim.

Besides the obvious problems, there were also practical matters that needed to be attended to now that they were back on board. Felix wanted a hot shower, a change of clothes, and a stiff drink. In that order and preferably with that latter enjoyed from the comfort of his bed.

An hour later, he had a bottle of some disgustingly expensive bourbon—made prior to the glassing of the colony of its origin—propped up between his legs, a clean-shaven face, and damp hair that had finally stopped dripping down the back of his neck. He was sitting on top of the bed instead of tucked between its sheets, leaning back against the wall and staring blankly at the small window on the opposite side of the room. About a fifth of the bottle was circulating through his bloodstream, but it wasn't quite enough to fully blunt the edge that was keeping his insides brittle and uncomfortable. He didn't know what to make of Wu's return from the dead and although he fully intended to scour the bottom of the bottle for answers, he knew they weren't actually there.

It wasn't that he _hated_ Mason Wu. At least, he hadn't, back when they had been working together in earnest. Things had always been a little complicated between them, though the occasional spikes of animus had never spilled over into open hostility. Maybe it was another story now, he hadn't decided yet, but _before_ , their relationship had been a simpler kind of complicated.

Despite what he'd been through, in the war and then in the aftermath of its conclusion, Wu's ideology had been different from Felix's. He was a fighter down to his marrow, but he hadn't been born a killer, and that distinction had always been present in the decisions he'd made during their partnership. Whenever possible, he'd chosen to apprehend their targets and turn them over to the proper authorities. Bounty hunting to make the universe a better place had been _his_ idea. The money was just a large, attractive bonus that he seemed to care about more for the sake of his family than for himself.

With no dependents, no morality to speak of, and an insatiable lust for violence and killing, Felix had had a difficult time understanding him. He'd gone along with the bounty hunter shtick because Locus had wanted to do it. Because he could get away with killing people without having to worry about getting thrown in prison. Because he could make a shitload of money doing something he enjoyed, making the whole enterprise more like a fun and exciting hobby than work.

And then, like a prime piece of real estate, there was Locus.

Felix and Wu had circled him like rival investors, each on opposite ends of the spectrum and locked in a constant struggle for his attention and regard. Wu had a tendency to blunt Locus' sharpest edges, which Felix had hated, and his own prodding at Locus toward violence and mayhem had often been met with Wu's disapproval. Probably the only thing they had ever wholly agreed on was that the other was a bad influence. Locus had to have realized what was going on, but he had never really acknowledged it and moved between them with an ease that had seemed oblivious, going out for a drink with Wu at a bar as readily as joining Felix on all of those assassination jobs that were too dubious for the third wheel to approve of or participate in.

If they took Locus out of the equation, however, they had usually been able to get along well enough. They had been able to swap jokes and sarcastic banter without taking any real offense at it. They had been able to work together so smoothly that an outside observer would have never been able to suspect that there was any friction between them. And although he had often treated them like some kind of sacred subject that was completely off limits, Wu had frequently tolerated Felix making sly, albeit harmless, jabs at his family.

They had probably been as close to friends as Felix could get to someone who wasn't Locus. He'd taken a bullet for him a few times, which wasn’t something he'd do for anybody or without a damn good reason, and Wu had done the same for him. Though in all fairness, he had never really ascribed much meaning to that. Wu was a do-gooder at heart; heroically taking bullets for people he didn't like had probably just been a _thing_ for him. He had even been able to accompany Locus on his semi-regular meet-ups with Wu, drink with them, and _not_ pick fights designed to ruin the night and send them home early.

When he died—when Felix had _thought_ that he'd died.... He paused in his musing, picked up the bourbon, and took a long pull straight from the bottle. It went down as smooth as ever, maybe a little smoother now that he'd consumed so much of it, and after taking another smaller sip, he set the bottle down and let his head drop back against the wall.

Learning that Wu was alive and that everything that had happened that night had been a lie ought to have made it easier to think about. But for reasons Felix couldn't fathom and eventually attributed to the liquor, his brain refused to cooperate. Like it was participating in a street fight, it ducked and wove around the details, dodging the majority of them and conveniently giving him only a hazy, oddly distant recollection of the aftermath.

What came most readily to mind was how frustrating it had been trying to figure out what was going on in Locus' head. He'd withdrawn almost immediately, refusing to say much about what had happened or how he felt about it. Felix would have found the whole thing somewhat unsettling if it had dragged on for too long, but with so much to do—find the members of the cartel, avenge the deaths of Siris and his family, deal with actual paying clients—Locus had focused on work and then had never stopped. At the time, Felix had been relieved by that prioritization. It had enabled him to compartmentalize everything Wu-related, bury it, and completely avoid dealing with it. But as months had passed, he'd slowly come to realize that things weren't going back to normal the way he'd thought they would. Something was still wrong with Locus, and with no idea how to solve the problem, things between them had started to get... weird _._ Far too quickly, weird melted into distance. And distance ultimately transformed into the journey to become the perfect emotionless killing machine.

Which made it Wu's fault.

Every strained minute. Every irritating hour of inexplicable tension. The endless days of standing on the side of a chasm he couldn't cross, not knowing how he'd gotten there or why, watching as Locus got further and further away. Chorus. Dying. Being betrayed. Trying to live with that betrayal, constantly feeling the uncertainty and doubt eating away at him bit by tiny bit. Wu had caused all of it with his cavalier duplicity and Felix couldn't— _wouldn't_ —forgive him.

Anger was straightforward. Hatred was simple. Those feelings were clean and easy. He knew what to do with them, how to process them and react to them. The rest of it was an uncomfortable, confusing muddle that he would probably never be able to sort through. And looking at it from that angle, he decided that it was probably better to hate the bastard now, regardless of what had existed in the past. Because the past was never coming back and the damage Wu was doing in the present was real and unforgivable.

It just fucking figured, too. He was finally starting to see hints of the man Locus had hidden behind the robot and it had, however tentatively, given him hope that they would find their way back to how they'd been. Before they'd gone down to the surface, things had been _good._ Relatively speaking, anyway. And it seemed like they were on track to get even better. So _of course_ Wu had waltzed out of the goddamn grave to fuck it all up again.

He'd taken Locus away from him once. If that garbage on the shuttle was any indication, he was well on his way to doing it a second time.

_What the fuck am I going to do?_ Neither the bottle he was staring morosely into nor the wall that eventually became the focus of his blank gaze held any answers. And he didn't have anyone he could ask for advice. Locus was compromised. The prowler didn't have a smart AI that might be able to substitute for an actual person. It was down to him to find an answer and all he could really envision himself doing was eliminating the competition.

Which would probably just piss Locus off. Which would drive him away. Which would piss Felix off. Which would lead to more killing. Which would prevent them from ever reconciling. But not eliminating the competition meant there would _be_ a competition. And Locus had already proven, in present word and in future deed, that Felix would lose a competition if one occurred.

Round and round the thoughts went, spiraling tighter into inconclusive frustration and suffocating inaction with every repetition. Instead of making him anxious and antsy, however, it just made him feel old and exhausted and then, not enjoying the feeling of being old, irritable.

At some point, he must have fallen asleep, because when his eyelids rose from what he thought was a perfectly normal blink, Felix found himself slumped sideways, the side of his face mashed into the pillow and his mouth so thick and dry that he wouldn't have been terribly surprised to find that part of the blanket had snuck in there and died on his tongue. Licking his lips in a futile effort to coax moisture back, he pushed himself upright and winced as his head and his spine protested the movement.

The bottle of bourbon had survived the unexpected nap, still propped upright against the inside of his thigh. Needing something to wash his mouth out, he took a quick swig, regretted it as soon as he swallowed the mouthful, and forced himself to get up. There were painkillers in the kitchen. Provided that he managed to get there before his body killed him, he could take a few, get some water, choke something down to sop up the queasiness in his stomach, and then maybe take another shower.

If he didn't pass out on the floor first. As he coaxed his feet into cooperation and took a few steps, it seemed like a highly likely possibility. There was a pair of cotton pants thrown haphazardly on the chair in the corner of the room. Felix eyed them for a long, unsteady moment, contemplating the level of difficulty trying to get them on would present, then decided that the struggle wasn't worth the effort. Equally impossible was the prospect of successfully navigating his feet into a pair of shoes. And because he wasn't up to the task of rooting through the closet for a robe, Felix left the room in nothing but his boxer shorts.

Somehow, though he didn't know how he accomplished it or how long it took him to get there, he reached the kitchen without any unfortunate mishaps. Three heavy duty painkillers, a glass of water, two cups of coffee, three eggs of unknown origin, and two pieces of bread later, Felix felt a little more human and less like the partially decomposed remains of something rotten that had been scraped off the bottom of a Warthog. Yet without the distraction of extreme discomfort, his thoughts started to creep back toward last night's dilemma.

_Shower_ , he told himself firmly, pushing off from the counter where he'd been leaning, nursing a third cup of coffee. _Shower. More sleep. Maybe some... lunch? Dinner? What time is it?_ A glance at the nearest clock told him it was 1130. _Dinner._ Then _I'll figure shit out._ It was an empty gesture and he knew it. In a few hours, he wouldn't have any clearer an idea of what to do than he did right then, but because it was theoretically possible for brilliance to strike, the avoidance worked.

Mind relatively clear of annoying thoughts he didn't want to have, Felix set off back to his quarters. The coolness of the floor against his bare feet was strangely refreshing; it kept the last of the queasy warmth of nausea at bay so well that he felt his dour mood actually starting to improve a little bit. It carried him halfway across the command deck and probably would have delivered him straight to his room, had it not been for the sound of Locus' voice drifting out of an open door.

There was no one else on the ship, he sure as hell wasn't talking to Felix, and Locus wasn't one to talk to himself. Knowing there were only two people he could possibly be speaking with and hating both of them, Felix paused near the doorway, too far back to be seen from the interior of the room. A sudden wave of déjà vu swept over him before he could make out the words of whatever Locus was saying, reminding him of the future and the price he'd paid then for lurking around in the dark outside of that study door, eavesdropping on a conversation he hadn't been meant to hear.

_No._ His rejection of the similarities between that moment and this one was instantaneous. _I'm not doing this again._ Without further consideration of the consequences he might face for interrupting this conversation, Felix stormed through the doorway and focused the nastiest, most furious scowl he could muster on Locus.

"—look them over," Locus was saying to the screen in front of an active console. "Another set of..." His eyes tracked sideways and met Felix's glare. After a slight hesitation, he looked back at the screen. "I'm going to have to get back to you."

Although it was an ever present possibility now, Felix had known before he'd entered the room that it wasn't going to be Wash on the other end of the line. And when he heard the heavy sigh that followed Locus' pronouncement, he knew that he'd been right. "Tell him to wait. This is important."

"I'll call you back," Locus replied firmly, too fast for Felix to get his own outraged retort out of his mouth. Not waiting for Wu's rebuttal, he terminated the connection, shut off the screen, and turned away from the console.

It was such an unexpected reaction that it left Felix feeling a little unsteady, like the ship's inertial negation system was on the fritz. From what little he had heard, it sounded like Locus and Wu had been talking about something related to either the dumb mission or some new, no doubt equally stupid, mission. Which meant that Locus hadn't just sided with Felix against his unexpectedly alive best friend, he'd sided against doing _work_. That he'd done it for no better reason than to talk to Felix made it even weirder.

Locus was staring at him, giving him one of those assessing once-overs that usually preceded a lecture. In preparation, Felix folded his arms and glowered harder. "What the hell are—"

"Are you drunk?" Locus asked, speaking over him.

The question was so irrelevant that it momentarily waylaid Felix's indignant demands. "Excuse you?"

Moving out from behind the console, Locus responded calmly, "I'm not having this conversation when you're drunk and argumentative."

_Which conversation is that?_ "You really think I'm _less_ argumentative sober," Felix snapped back, affronted.

Evidently Locus wasn't convinced by his ability to successfully enunciate _argumentative_ , because he just looked down his nose at him and remarked dryly, "You look terrible."

"Whose fault is that?" It was a rhetorical question. Felix didn't wait for him to volley the blame back at him. He jerked his chin toward the screen. "The two of you conspiring against me now or what?"

Although Locus' fingers twitched like he wanted to rub a headache away, he only sighed. Heavily. "Why would you think that?"

Felix rolled his eyes. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe your little clandestine call has something to do with it? Maybe?"

"The door was open."

"So?"

The headache must have abruptly gotten worse. Locus didn't even try to pretend he wasn't digging the heel of his palm into his forehead. "Why is it so difficult for you to trust me?"

For a moment, Felix said nothing. Just stared at him and let the oppressive silence speak for him. But then, recognizing that Locus was playing dumb for all it was worth, he said loudly, "You just told me you'd sell me out for an imaginary fucking family! And there's that whole killing me to—"

"I needed to speak to him," Locus interrupted, taking his hand away from his face to hold it up in a forestalling gesture. "I sent a message via the contact _you_ had with him and he replied. I wanted..." He paused, his expression briefly shifting to something uncertain and uncomfortable before he cleared his throat. "I wanted a better understanding of what happened to him and why he maintained the deception for as long as he has."

Everything in him wanted to make a sarcastic comment about Wu's precious _family_ and derail the whole idiotic explanation, but even hungover and in a bad mood, Felix could recognize that Locus was trying to communicate his feelings on the whole mess. Admittedly, he didn't much care about Locus' feelings at the moment. As a self-proclaimed backstabbing bastard, his feelings weren't worth a damn thing. But the specter of Wash's mysterious ability to make Locus fall in love with him hovered too close to the forefront of Felix's mind to brush him off without at least _trying_ to hear him out.

As much as it pained him to say it, Felix forced himself to grudgingly ask, "And why's that?"

If Locus realized how benevolent and understanding he was being, he didn't let on. "In the beginning, it wasn't safe for him to tell us. And after the danger to him and his family had passed, he wasn't permitted to reveal himself."

It wasn't a stretch to imagine it going down that way. Felix had encountered enough undercover cops, agents, and criminals throughout the course of his life to have memorized the story. Whatever the original intentions that led to someone faking their own death, the end result was the same: the dead had far more freedom than the living and significantly more leeway to circumvent any rules that might have once leashed them in life. And an organization like ONI never let a valuable asset slip through its fingers.

Plus, Wu had a hard-on for abiding by the rules. All it had probably taken for him to thoroughly give the finger to his former partners was for his boss to send him an officially worded email. Then it had been goodbye, Felix and Locus. Hello, years of betrayal.

"Later," Locus continued, which came as something of a surprise to Felix. He thought the boring story was over. "He didn't think we could be trusted with the information."

" _We_ couldn't be trusted?" Every time he thought he couldn't get angrier at Wu, Felix discovered that there were still heights left unexplored. " _We_ weren't the ones who'd been lying for years! The only person who can't be trusted is him!"

Locus shook his head, looking entirely too understanding about the whole mess to Felix. "We aren't the same people anymore. He wasn't wrong to be wary."

_Wrong._ Then _I wouldn't have gutted the son of a bitch._ Now _I damn well will._ There was another blatantly obvious hole in that argument, so huge that Felix couldn't ignore it. "No? Four years from now, when you and your bitch are gallivanting heroically around the galaxy, saving every useless asshole you find, he _still_ doesn't trust you enough to tell you who he is!"

Constipation descended on Locus' expression like an unexpected downpour on an otherwise sunny day. Guessing at what asinine thing he was about to say, Felix barreled on, not wanting to have to suffer through any infuriating defenses of either of the bastards. " _We_ weren't the problem. _He's_ the problem." He jabbed his finger at Locus. "He's conning you, giving you the first bullshit sob story he thinks you'll believe and you're playing into his hands like a gullible fucking idiot."

There were situations in which reasonable appeals to logic were appreciated and situations where they were completely inappropriate. Locus still hadn't learned the distinction. "The future that you saw no longer exists. You need to let it go and focus on the present."

It literally felt like he was going to explode and he was _way_ too hungover for that. Felix took a deep breath, and when that failed to dislodge the throbbing in his head and the warning roil of potential nausea, he took another one. "Turn off the selective hearing for _two minutes_ and maybe listen to what I'm fucking saying. He's a _liar._ He's _been_ lying to you for years. He would've _kept_ lying to you _for years_ if I hadn't called his ass out last night." He could feel the desire to scream at him rising in his throat and he had to consciously tamp it down. "So take that into consideration before you just accept everything he says and start trusting him again."

"That isn't what I'm doing."

"No?" Felix arched an eyebrow as he put his hands indignantly on his hips. "What are you doing, then?"

"Trying to figure out how to work with him."

"Say what now?" Felix asked blankly, sure that he hadn't just heard what he thought he heard.

"Mason's looking into the same thing we are." Locus lifted his eyebrows, nearly making a face at him. "The same thing he was looking into _four years from now._ "

The sarcastic tone made his eyes narrow automatically. "Keep it up."

Maybe Locus took the warning seriously, because surprisingly, he didn't. "He wants to work with us," he said normally. "After I explained how you knew what you do about it, he realized we'd be more effective working together than separately."

The way he said it, it was like Locus thought that explanation made everything _better_. Felix was quick to disabuse him of that notion. "How the fuck is what happened to _me_ any of his goddamn business?"

"Isaac—"

"No!" Felix made a quick, slashing gesture with the side of his hand. "He isn't one of us anymore, Sam. He's ONI now. And you just sold me out to the fucking enemy!"

"I didn't sell you out! I just—"

"No?!" Yelling was going to make the headache worse. Felix knew that. Just like he knew, deep down underneath all of the anger and betrayal and the discomfort he didn't want to identify, that fighting about it was going to erase all of the progress they'd made over the weeks since they'd left Chorus. It had the makings of that first, catastrophic schism and he _knew_ that they weren't going to be able to survive being torn apart again. Not when there were allies Locus would be able to turn to this time that would spirit him too far beyond Felix's ability to reach him. But knowing that he ought to calm down wasn't the same as being able to do it. "You know how they operate! He'll use us to solve his problem, then he'll pin it all on me and watch me take the fall."

Locus shook his head, looking more exasperated than aggrieved or angry. "What are you talking about? Mason wouldn't—"

"Are you fucking kidding me right now?" Unable to properly articulate how preposterous he thought Locus' denial was, Felix gave a wordless snarl of frustration. When that failed, he raked both hands through his hair, making the tangled mess an even bigger disaster. "Of course he would! He never liked me! Not really. Sure, maybe he tried, but he's _always_ thought I was bad for you. Even before everything went to shit. Now, he's probably trying to figure out the best way to _rescue_ you from my evil clutches."

Genuine amusement suffused Locus' responding snort. "I don't need to be rescued." 

_No shit. Try telling Wu that._ "My _point_ is that—"

Since he'd terminated the call with Wu, Locus had been leaning against the edge of the console, not exactly relaxed but likely doing his best to make himself comfortable for an uncomfortable conversation. Now, he pushed up off of it like he intended to move away from it and Felix tensed, expecting him to come closer. But Locus didn't actually go anywhere. He just stood up straight, like maybe he thought the excellent posture would somehow give his opinion more gravitas.

"He wants our help shutting down the proliferation of this weapon before it starts," Locus said reasonably, without waiting for him to finish making his point. "He began receiving suspicious reports following the incident at New Phoenix and was in the process of investigating them when you baited him. Because our goals align, I shared some of the information you've given me about your experience in the future. That information convinced him that our cooperation and assistance would be beneficial to the mission. Our assistance offers him a more expedient method of dealing with the threat. His resources allow us to complete the task faster. That's all it is."

For an ordinary job with an ordinary client, sure. Felix could have believed that that was all it was. But getting involved with ONI complicated matters on its own. Getting involved with ONI _and_ Wu made it exponentially more complicated and worse, it made it personal. Everything always went to shit in a hurry when business got personal.

"And when it's over?" he challenged, refusing to buy it. "Then what?"

Locus shrugged so casually that Felix realized that he genuinely believed the bullshit he'd been saying. "Then we leave and go somewhere else. And Mason goes back to work."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

_It won't be that easy. By now, you ought to know that. It's_ never _that easy._ But it would be for Locus. That was the problem. It was always easy for Locus. He would walk away from this mess unscathed, just like he had in the future, and Felix would pay for it. Maybe with his life. Maybe with his freedom. Maybe through some means he couldn't yet foresee. There would be a price, though. There was _always_ a price.

And once again, Felix didn't have any options. Locus had obviously already made the decision, and unless he was willing to cut ties with him and leave, he had no choice but to go along with it. Just like Locus knew that he would.

Because that was what he did every fucking time. Locus could betray him, kill him, blatantly tell him the circumstances that would lead him to cast him aside, choose the enemy over him, and Felix would still follow him into one miserable disaster after another like a dim-witted asshole with no self-respect. And for what? To be insulted and blamed every time a plan went wrong? To be told to shut up whenever he opened this mouth and treated like he was nothing but a nuisance that could barely be tolerated? It sure as hell wasn't for the sex, given how nonexistent that had been over the last handful of years.

Locus hadn't been wrong to demand an explanation for his manipulations, but in his self-righteous self-absorption, he'd clearly never considered that he was just as manipulative as Felix had been. In different ways. For different reasons. But still equally manipulative.

Felix gave him a long, unhappy stare, hating him for putting him in this position _again_ and hating himself for being unable to break the chain that still had a stranglehold around his neck. "It's going to backfire on you one of these days," he promised him quietly, wishing he could say _this time_ and mean it, instead of knowing that the threat would be empty if he did. "I won't let you do this to me forever."

Consternation started to draw Locus' brows together. "I'm not—"

Shaking his head, Felix spun on his heel—not nearly as gracefully as he would have liked, as the bare skin of his sole stuck slightly to the floor—and walked out on him. He'd already lost the argument. There wasn't any reason to linger and he definitely wasn't in the mood to listen to Locus try to fumble his way through a series of paltry excuses and clumsy assurances.

Needing the shower now more than ever, he made a beeline to his quarters. There was still a fair amount of bourbon left. And he'd squirreled away a decent selection of nonperishable food half a week ago. If he played his cards right, he wouldn't have to leave his quarters or see Locus again for the rest of the day.

* * *

The next morning, Felix was roused from what was well on its way to becoming a marathon-level doze by the soft, unobtrusive sound of the door to his quarters sliding open. Knowing that there was only one person the intruder could possibly be, he kept his eyes closed, his breathing even, and the side of his face firmly pressed into the pillow, feigning sleep in the hope that Locus would give up and go away without bothering him. But instead of doing the decent thing and leaving him in peace, Locus entered the room, his quiet footsteps growing nearer and nearer until they reached the side of the bed and stopped. Immediately, Felix felt the full weight of Locus' gaze settle on the back of his head, and as he steadfastly maintained the even cadence of his breathing, it grew heavier and more judgmental.

_Give up, motherfucker. I'm not going to acknowledge you._

"I know you're awake," Locus said finally, after the silence had stretched through nearly two minutes.

Felix ignored him, determined to make his point as emphatically as possible. Because of course he was awake. Locus hadn't been silent when he entered the room, and even if he had been, the sheer presence of him looming over him like he was would have irritated Felix's instincts enough to wake him up. It wasn't about _convincingly_ feigning sleep. It was about making the statement that he'd rather pretend to be asleep, even though neither of them were fooled by it, than acknowledge Locus in any conceivable fashion.

Locus got the memo, too, because he sighed irritably, then demanded, "Get up."

Since the message had been received, Felix decided that he could be benevolent enough to give him a disagreeable, though somewhat muffled, "No."

"Yes." Locus was usually too busy being stuffy and mature to lower himself to childish antics, but it seemed like he was willing to make an exception today. Unpleasantly cool air washed over Felix's bare skin as the sheets were unceremoniously yanked away from him. "Go take a shower."

With a wordless snarl of annoyance, Felix pushed himself up off of his stomach and twisted around. "Oh, for fuck's—" And took a pair of sweatpants straight to the face.

Swatting them aside, he saw Locus rifling through his bureau. A moment later, he plucked a black sleeveless shirt from the upper drawer and flung that over his shoulder unerringly toward the bed with a no-nonsense, "And wear loose clothes."

Had he not seen it coming, it probably would have gone the way of the sweatpants, but Felix had ample opportunity to divert it away from his face. And now that he was awake and openly looking at him, he noticed that Locus was wearing something similar to what he'd thrown at him: loose cotton pants, a light sleeveless shirt, and a pair of athletic shoes. He even had his hair pulled back, though it still wasn't as long as it had been before they'd arrived on Chorus and was looking a little frizzy at the edges. Felix was tempted to laugh at him, but the sinking realization of what the interruption and the painfully casual attire meant sucked the humor right out of him.

Maintenance. Some part of the ship _they'd just bought_ required the kind of manual labor that Felix only ever grudgingly agreed to do as an absolute last resort. And Locus, evidently determined to make Felix downright hate him, had come to root him out of bed and chivvy him into it.

"There's a whole fucking planet full of people down there," he grumbled, as he hauled himself out of bed and resentfully swept the clothes into his arms. "You couldn't find _anyone else_ to do this?"

Locus gave him a peculiar look, then shook his head slightly—the same way he did whenever his hands were full and he was trying to shake loose, obnoxious strands of hair out of his eyes—and jerked his chin toward the bathroom. "Just go."

It was tempting to take his good goddamn time about it and drag the shower out for as long as humanly possible, but he knew that the longer he dawdled, the more irritable Locus was going to get, and as fun as doing maintenance on a starship wasn't, doing it with Locus being a cranky bastard the whole time was even less appealing. So even though he'd been bullied into it and wanted to spend his afternoon elbows-deep in the innards of whatever was malfunctioning about as much as he wanted to be shot in the head, Felix made short work of the shower, eschewed a shave to keep the bitching to a minimum, got dressed, and quickly brushed his teeth and hair. Yawning, he opened the door, stepped out, and was immediately confronted with a confusing, nonsensical sight.

Locus was sitting on the end of the now neatly made bed with a dull grey duffel bag at his hip, a cup of coffee in one hand and one of the red, sour-sweet fruits from Gao that Felix absolutely loved in the other. For a few, uncertain seconds, Felix just stood there in the doorway, staring at him while he waited for the scene to resolve into something more reasonable. But Locus just met the stare with bland indifference and held out the cup.

Felix took a cautious step forward, waving his hand in a circle meant to encompass the whole bizarre tableau. "What...?"

Standing up, Locus moved over to him and shoved the coffee into his hand. "You need to be alert and focused."

If that meant there was a spacewalk in his near future, Felix was going to be _really_ annoyed. "You sure this is enough?" he asked, glancing dubiously down into the depths of the dark coffee. Locus grunted impatiently, drawing his attention back to him. "Christ, _fine_." Knocking it back like he was taking a shot, Felix swallowed the entire hot, yet mercifully not burning, contents of the mug and, lifting his eyebrows, offered it back to him.

With practiced efficiency, Locus plucked the mug from his hand and replaced it with the fruit an instant later. "You can eat that on the way."

He wrinkled his nose, suspecting that it was meant to be a peace offering and not the least bit inclined to accept it. "You realize that I'm still pissed at you, right?"

Locus ignored the question like it hadn't been asked. Turning away, he returned to the bed, grabbed the duffel bag in his free hand, and headed for the door. "Come on."

Pissed off or not, Felix _really_ liked the fruit, but the temptation to throw it at the back of Locus' head kept him from immediately devouring it. He stood there, glancing from it to the target that Locus made and back again, until Locus realized that he wasn't being followed and stopped, half in the doorway, to look back at him in irritation. "Felix. Now."

"You really can take the enjoyment out of everything," Felix mused in partially sarcastic wonder, shaking his head. "Un-fucking-believable." But because Deputy Dickhead of the Fun Police was giving him the _hurry the fuck up, this work won't do itself_ glare that meant hours of utter boredom that would only get longer the more he procrastinated, he sighed and got moving. "Did you wake up on the bossy side of the bed this morning or what?"

"Just eat your breakfast and come with me," was all Locus had to say to that.

The path Locus chose took them past the galley so that he could drop off the coffee mug because _of course_ it did. Felix was just surprised that he didn't hold up the start of their day of excruciatingly dull manual labor for the sake of cleaning it first. _Must have decided to live on the edge this morning_ , he thought snidely as he lingered in the doorway and polished off the rest of the fruit. He had half a mind to toss the core on the counter just to be a shit—how would Locus ever get through the day knowing that fruit juice was drying into a sticky mess on the counter?—but in the end, some kind of unholy benevolence provoked him into changing the trajectory of the throw and instead of landing somewhere that would instigate a fight, it settled neatly into the trash.

_Sometimes_ , Felix thought as he sullenly trailed after Locus, licking his fingers clean, _I'm so considerate it's disgusting._

Expecting to find the airlock at the end of their journey, Felix was somewhat nonplussed when Locus took a left and led him into the cargo hold. The largely _empty_ cargo hold, he noticed immediately. It hadn't exactly been full, but there had been enough containers in it that their inexplicable absence was glaringly obvious. What remained were the few items too large to fit through the door; those were pushed up against the walls, leaving a large expanse of floor clear of obstruction.

Glancing sideways at Locus, Felix found him crouched in front to the duffel bag, which he'd set down next to the wall, and digging through it for something. Before neutral curiosity could transform into paranoid wariness, he straightened up and Felix saw the combat knives in his hand. Four of them, each blade the standard issue twenty centimeters. Without a word, Locus offered two of them to him handle first, and like a flood light clicking on, he realized what was happening.

"You're joking." But even as he said it and searched Locus' eyes for the joke that wasn't there, Felix took the knives.

Locus simply lifted an eyebrow. "Best out of four?"

Felix opened his mouth on a flippant response, but before the words could escape, he found himself reconsidering. As angry as he was with the asshole, he could recognize a truce when it was presented to him and that was obviously what this was meant to be. Kind of stupid on Locus' part, really, inviting him to a knife fight when there was still a very real possibility that he might stab him in earnest. But it was because he was doing it now, when he knew that he might actually get killed, that Felix knew the gesture was sincere. And that meant he had to make a similar one.

Pushing aside every iota of spitefulness he possessed, he asked with cool professionalism, "You want to get a little exercise or do you want a real fight?"

As it stood, the fight was heavily weighted in Felix's favor. He was too fast and nimble, and the target areas too small, for Locus to successfully tag him once, much less often enough to win. Whereas Locus' bare arms might as well have been the size of billboards, with a comparable range of movement and speed, for all the difficulty Felix was going to have scoring points. If a _real_ fight was truly the aim of this—from the effort Locus had taken to ensure that Felix was awake, alert, and supplied with the energy his body needed, he thought that it was—the playing field needed to be leveled considerably.

It was probably the gravity of his tone that prompted Locus to reply, equally serious, "A real fight."

With a nod, Felix tucked the knives into his waistband and took his shirt off. In nothing but the sweatpants that already sat low on his hips, there was plenty of bare skin for Locus to target. He rolled the shirt into a ball, tossed it onto the floor beside the duffel, and picked up the knives again, one in each hand. They were new acquisitions from Fel. He spun one between his fingers to get the feel for its balance, then did the same with the other. They'd do.

Locus must have already tested them out prior to rooting Felix out of bed. He was just standing there, waiting patiently through the warm-up, his set of knives held in a loose, comfortable grip. "Ready?" he asked, after Felix had rolled out his shoulders.

_Stupid question._ Settling onto the balls of his feet, Felix tipped the point of a knife at him and smoothed out the field just a little further. "Your lead." 

Instead of moving to immediately engage him, and thereby hand over a point right out of the gate, Locus began circling him. His steps were slow, deliberately placed, and designed to reveal any vulnerabilities that his opponent might be trying conceal. Felix knew what he was doing, knew that he could refuse to play along and yank the advantage firmly over to his side, but in the interest of fair play—whether he recognized it or not, Felix could never quite be certain, but Locus was the only person who ever got that consideration—he moved with him, step for step.

No instability, his precise movements said. No weakness. No stiffness. No favoring of any limb or side.

But Locus, on the other hand, possessed one very obvious vulnerability: the recently healed wound on his shoulder. The superior medical equipment of Venezia had knitted flesh and muscle together more expertly than Felix's handiwork and his shoulder was functional again. But it hadn't gotten a real workout since the injury. However faint it might be, there would still be weakness in that arm. And even being a fraction of a second too slow would mean a lost point in the match.

_Teach him the lesson or take the handicap?_ Felix mulled over his options as Locus sized him up, his own assessment of his opponent finished. Chances were good that Locus already knew that his shoulder was the proverbial chink in his armor and would try to compensate for it. Reinforcing that knowledge might be enjoyable for Felix's ego, but it wouldn't enhance the fight at all. And it had been a long-ass time since he'd had a _real_ challenge.

The memory of a translucent bridge on a forgotten world and the grey shadow lurking at the other end of it never crossed his mind.

Locus lunged forward in the middle of taking a sideways step, leading with his left hand, and Felix leaned back from it automatically, taking the handicap without conscious thought. Twisting with his momentum, he came up at Locus' side and feigned a strike with the blade. Locus was ready for it; he spun around and knocked his hand away before he got close enough to nick him. But Felix was already moving, dropping down to his knees and sliding under the swing of his arm. Casually, he flicked his wrist and the tip of the knife scored a short, shallow cut along the underside of Locus' forearm.

"One," Felix called, smirking as he got to his feet.

An instant later, his back hit the floor hard enough to knock the air from his lungs, his feet kicked out from under him so fast that he didn't register it happening until it was over. It only stunned him for a second, but it was enough time for Locus to swoop down and slash a thin line across his collarbone.

Baring his teeth, Felix kicked him in the chest before he could call the score and took the opening as he stumbled back to roll out of reach. The knives were sharp and Locus' control had been as precise as ever: he hardly felt the cut as anything more than the faintest of tingles. Pushing the hair out of his eyes— _I'm going to need a haircut soon_ —Felix rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, waiting for Locus to regain his balance.

"I've been practicing," Locus told him mildly, the beginnings of a self-satisfied smirk teasing at the corner of his mouth."

Felix clicked his tongue critically. "Not hard enough."

He let Locus come for him this time, going on the defensive and giving ground before his advance centimeter by deliberate centimeter. He blocked every swipe and stab, though he took none of his own. Locus knew he was up to something, the intensity of his gaze and the there-and-gone tiny smile that kept ghosting over his lips gave that away, but he didn't know _what_ Felix was doing. At least, Felix was pretty sure that he didn't. 

"You're sweating," Locus commented mildly, like they were having a casual stroll through a park.

The point of one of the knives skimmed through the air millimeters from Felix's cheek. Perfect balance let him tip backward just far enough to avoid it and quick footwork took him out of Locus' reach.

"And you're too fucking slow," he shot back, smirking openly as he straightened up.

Locus intercepted the kick he aimed at his stomach with the outside of his forearm, knocked against his ankle and pushed back to throw his balance off. Felix moved with it, pivoting around despite the target he made of his back by doing so, and darted the last few centimeters to the wall that he'd been maneuvering them toward. Leaping up, he planted one foot against it and shoved off, flipping over Locus' head as easily as if the artificial gravity generators had crapped out.  

And because he was blatantly showing off, he nicked the back of Locus' neck as he came down for good measure.

"Two," Felix sing-songed, as Locus spun around to face him. _That'll teach you to cut off all your hair_. It probably wouldn't. Locus was perfectly content to make sacrifices for their missions if he had to do it, and at the time, he'd decided that selling the Perfect Soldier routine to Chorus required the military-grade buzzcut. But if he hadn't done it, his nape would've been protected, and Felix knew that Locus was fully aware he'd tagged him there to make a point. 

"Subtle," Locus remarked dryly. "Could've just said I needed a haircut."

_Jokes too? He must've realized how deep in the shit he is._ "Try it and you're kissing your fingers goodbye." Not willing to be lured into an ambush by conversation, Felix started backing up. "I've suffered enough."

Rolling his eyes, Locus advanced on him. Felix held his ground for a moment, waggled his eyebrows, and then took off with a whoop of amused glee when Locus lunged at him. They went round and round the cargo hold, flowing between offense and defense as smoothly as water. With only one cut standing between Felix and victory of the match, he played fast and loose with the rhythm of his attacks and retreats as Locus became more aggressively determined to press him and steal the point.

A few times, Locus came dangerously close to it, too. During a dive meant to open a little more space between them, Felix felt the cool _whoosh_ of air against the small of his back where a blade nearly got him. Shortly thereafter, only a well-timed dodge kept the skin over his ribs unmarred by fresh wounds. Locus had some close calls himself, but much to Felix's—considerably mild—annoyance, he escaped with a couple expertly placed kicks and, in one instance that was memorial only because it still smarted a little, an elbow to back.

Though he hardly dared to jinx it by applying to it the name of Locus' archenemy, Felix was actually having _fun._ He was pretty damn sure Locus was, too. And after the chaotic emotional hurricane of the last forty-eight hours, that was a goddamn miracle.

The misstep, when it finally came, belonged to Locus. He overreached on a feint, a miniscule upset in his balance that would have never been noticed by an opponent of lesser skill. But Felix saw it and exploited it immediately. He swept Locus' feet out from under him and, unwilling to give him space to recover, followed him down. A brief struggle ensued, one that would have been deadly had it involved anyone else, only to end when Felix slammed Locus' shoulders back onto the floor and settled hard over his hips, pinning him there. Three of the knives lay scattered around them, discarded in the scuffle.

"I win!" Felix declared, holding the remaining knife triumphantly over Locus' bicep, point scant millimeters from his skin. His other hand remained planted against Locus' shoulder, holding him down.

Locus' eyebrows rose and his mouth curled into a tiny smirk. "Not yet."

Snorting at the absurdity of that, Felix shifted his attention to the knife. But before he could make the cut, Locus caught his wrist in one of those unbreakable grips that meant he was serious and wasn't going to tolerate fucking around. Confused, Felix glanced back at his face and found him giving him a look so intense that it seemed like he ought to have been seeing straight through his eyes into his brain. It meant something, those looks always did, but this time, Felix had no clue what it was.

"What?"

"Make it permanent."

Every thought he had disappeared, leaving his brain a curiously blank, empty place. "What?"

Locus held his gaze, unblinking. "You heard me."

And then he understood. _Really_ understood. Unable to believe it, Felix stared at him and said, a little distantly and a lot stupidly, "Shirt's in the way."

Felix had met a _lot_ of people over the course of his life, but no one had ever been able to communicate _stop being a fucking idiot_ quite as vehemently or as loudly with nothing but a look the way Locus could. Right now, it grounded him in the moment and proved that he hadn't slipped off into some adrenaline-induced fantasyland. Pretending that he hadn't seen it, Felix sat back on Locus' hips with an affected air of casual nonchalance, pulled the hem of his shirt taut with his free hand, set the edge of the blade against the collar of the thing, and pulled it down. The knife was in excellent condition, he had to give Fel that. It sliced through the fabric in seconds, as smoothly as hot metal through butter.

He kept his eyes on Locus' the entire time, some part of him still waiting to be told to knock it the hell off. But Locus didn't say a word. He just watched him, the slight cant of his eyebrow rather eloquently letting him know that he was well aware that Felix was toying with him. Felix, shameless and determined to enjoy this unexpected turn of events for as long as it lasted, grinned back at him. And to underscore the point, slowly peeled back the halves of the shirt like he was opening a much anticipated present.

Which, from a certain point of view, was exactly what he was doing. Locus' torso looked like it had been carved from granite, every muscle as sharply defined as it had been a decade ago. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his skin and half a dozen familiar scars that tantalizingly beckoned him to trace them with his fingertips. Or his tongue, though he knew if he did that, he would likely derail the offer Locus had made and who knew if he would ever make it again?

A compromise would have to be made and under the circumstances, there was only one that would satisfy him.

Ever so lightly, using just enough pressure for it to be felt, Felix touched the tip of the knife to the skin right above Locus' navel and skimmed it up the center of his abdomen, along his sternum, and then over his collarbone. Locus' measured breathing never changed. He didn't move or speak or tense as the blade glided over his flesh. But the visible prickling of his skin was proof that he wasn't unaffected by it.

Valiantly ignoring the stirring of his own arousal, Felix kept his mind off his dick and firmly on the task at hand. He cut through the shoulder seams of the shirt with quick, efficient twists of his wrist and then, not about to let the opportunity to partially undress Locus pass him by, pulled the ruined thing out from underneath him and tossed it in the direction of the duffel. Locus exhaled softly at that, and by the faint curve of his lips, Felix knew it for an expression of amusement.

As vast a canvas as Locus' body made for his artistic talents, there was only one suitable location for this. Even with Locus sprawled out under him, half naked and ever so slightly starting to get hard against his ass, Felix's attention was drawn to it. The hateful, offensive scar Wash had left on his shoulder. It was less noticeable now than what he had seen of it in the future, smaller and neater thanks to his deft handiwork and how quickly they'd acquired proper medical equipment. But it was still there; proof that Wash had touched him, proof that he had affected him in ways he never should have been able to do. Impossible to erase, yet for someone with enough skill, not impossible to remake.

Dropping the combat knife to the side, Felix leaned back slightly and withdrew the small, wickedly sharp knife he habitually strapped to his ankle whenever he was awake. Unused since the last time he'd sharpened it, it would provide a cleaner, more exact, less painful cut than the larger one would. 

He shot Locus a serious, interrogative look. "Change your mind now if you're going to do it."

Equanimously, Locus replied, "Go ahead."

Unable to resist needling him a little, Felix gave him a lopsided, mischievous grin. " _Anything_ I want?" It wasn't necessary that he specifically offer examples. His tone alone implied a number of inappropriate designs—like a dick or a heart or maybe a nice girly flower—he knew Locus would absolutely despise.

The beginnings of a forbidding frown pulled at the corners of his lips a moment before he intoned dangerously, "I will hurt you."

Felix clicked his tongue in mock disappointment. "Promises, promises."

His jovial demeanor disappeared as he leaned forward, all focus and professionalism now that he had actual work to do. It was extraordinarily tempting to make a loud, blatant, and thoroughly undeniable statement. To carve every letter of the names he claimed as his own—the one he'd been given at birth and the one he'd taken for reasons Locus would probably never realize—across his shoulder and down his arm so that everyone could see that Locus belonged to him. But he knew that the impulse was born of territorial possessiveness and jealousy. Just like he knew that their line of work, whether they were terrorizing the galaxy or saving it, was too unforgiving for such a clear indication of weakness. Felix was many things, nearly all of which he embraced, but the one thing he was _not_ was the Achilles heel that would get Locus killed.

Which ultimately made choosing what to carve into Locus' body as a testament to his place in his life the easiest thing in the universe.

Setting the point of the knife just above the start of the scar, Felix began to cut. The first line was short and straight, only a few millimeters long. Blood started to well out immediately, but Locus barely reacted to the sensation. Just a small tightening in the muscle along his neck that eased a few seconds later as he accepted the pain and breathed through it. After that, Felix stopped monitoring Locus' response to better concentrate on what he was doing. The design was hardly simple. And with every jagged line that he carved into him, a memory long buried but never truly forgotten grew stronger in his mind.

It was a backwater planet that had gotten glassed long before his own homeworld had fallen. He'd been a soldier for about a year and a half by then, give or take. Shuttling between one dying planet and another to fight losing battle after losing battle, his perception of time had quickly grown a bit hazy around the edges—though it got sharper after he met Ortez because _everything_ got sharper after that—and he'd stopped paying attention to trivial details. They'd gotten pinned down in the burning wreck of a decimated city. It was the middle of the night and the remains of their squad—Ortez, him, and two other guys whose names he hadn't bothered to learn—had been chased into an underground parking garage by a pack of Covenant assholes.

He'd never found out exactly how many of them there were. The battle outside had been too chaotic to get an accurate number and later, he hadn't been in any position to count them. But there'd been a lot. Too damn many.

Visibility had been shit inside that concrete hellhole and it had only gotten worse when the Sangheili in charge had decided to smoke them out. But he'd seen the purple-pink gleam of Needler shards easily enough. Ortez hadn't. He'd been too busy trying to stop the bleeding of one of their soon-to-be-dead comrades. He'd still been the new guy at that point, not even with the squad for two weeks and had been a largely unknown, not terribly personable yet distractingly hot entity.

But when that ugly Unggoy bastard had taken the shot, he'd thrown himself in front of him without a thought. He'd taken the plasma shard meant for Ortez straight to the back, and the piss-poor angle of entry meant that he hadn't been able to get it out before it detonated. Quick treatment had prevented the wound from making a disfiguring mess of his back, but it had left him with an odd, jaggedly asymmetrical starburst-shaped scar that he'd never tried to have removed.

It had taken him a long time to understand the uncharacteristic impulse that had led him to risk his life for someone else the way that he had that night. A long time and a disturbingly high number of repeat performances. But eventually, grudgingly, despite all the concentrated avoidance and distraction he’d subjected himself to whenever his thoughts had started to wander in a decidedly curious direction, he'd been forced to acknowledge it. Over the years, he'd come to accept it. And finally, when Hargrove had offered him his pick of illegally obtained equipment, he'd declared it openly with his choice.

He was Locus' shield. He always had been. Physically, emotionally, socially—whatever Locus needed, whenever he needed it, Felix had always unthinkingly stood between him and everything else.

The image he was carving into Locus' shoulder was smaller than what marred his back, but it was accurate down to the tiniest tear. To an outsider, it would be nothing more than a scar, albeit an unusual looking one. Completely useless if seen by an enemy. But Felix knew what it meant. More importantly, so did Locus.

Reproducing such an intricate design took time, and because he didn't have any styptic on hand, he had to keep pausing to wipe the blood away with the strip of fabric he'd torn off of his pant leg. But Locus didn't once urge him to hurry the hell up. He didn't make any noise at all. Not even to indicate discomfort when Felix had to cut a curve into the more sensitive skin near the underside of his arm. He simply watched him. Felix could feel the intense weight of his gaze like a physical touch, though he didn't look up from his work until he was finished.

_There._ One last zigzagging line, like the branching fork of a lightning bolt, and his masterpiece was complete. The blood streaking Locus' skin made it look more massive than it actually was, though it was still large enough to take up about two-thirds of the area between the edge of his arm and his chest. The mark Wash had left there was completely obliterated.

As he sat back and stretched out his spine, Felix gave in to the demand he could practically feel beating into the side of his head and met Locus' eyes. There something in them, the only glimpse of emotion in his otherwise stoically blank expression, but Felix couldn't quite decipher it and trying made him feel... _weird._ Restless. Unsteady. Jittery.

Needing an immediate diversion to get them back on firmer ground, he lifted the knife to his mouth and licked Locus' blood from the blade. The uncomfortable emotion disappeared, snuffed out by something darker and infinitely more familiar. In response, an echo of that violence-edged lust stirred inside him, too, and with the taste of Locus' blood on his tongue, Felix gave himself over to it before he realized it was happening. Gone were the half-formed thoughts of inspecting his handiwork and making a witty remark or seven at his partner's expense. All he cared about now was chasing the promise he saw lurking there in the depths of Locus' eyes and sating himself with all that it offered.

Without breaking eye contact, he dropped the knife onto the floor and suggestively sucked one of his bloody fingers into his mouth. Against the inside of his thighs, he felt the tension surge through Locus' body, tightening the muscles of his abdomen as if he was fighting with himself not to move. After a moment, Felix withdrew his finger and made a show of licking it clean, openly savoring the tang of his blood with the same satisfied enthusiasm he typically reserved for Locus' dick after a blowjob. 

Locus evidently recognized it, because he grabbed him by the back of the neck and yanked him down so fast that Felix didn't even have time to flail over the sudden upset to his balance. He barely managed to get his hand out of the way before Locus was kissing him. After that, he stopped thinking about his hands and what he ought to be doing with them because Locus was licking his tongue like he was trying to steal a taste of himself, possessive and so demanding that Felix couldn't suppress a low, rasping moan of pleasure at the sheer unrestrained fury of it. 

Years of not being able to have Locus might have been hell, but practically drowning under the onslaught of all that repressed, pent up lust was probably the closest to heaven a man could get.

Too caught up in Locus' mouth to pay attention to anything else, Felix didn't realize he was moving until he felt his back hit the floor. But it took the abrupt, unacceptable disappearance of that and the weight pressing him down to beat back the arousal enough to process actual thoughts. The first one to make it through wasn't particularly helpful. _What?_

Felix opened his eyes, half a dozen complaints about Locus being a teasing bastard vying to be spoken, and found him sitting back on his hips, still surprisingly close. Just not _close enough_. His lips were looking a little swollen and his hair was a wild tangle around his head. Blood streaked his skin like improvised warpaint, down his arm and across his chest in whorls and splatters and one spot on the side of his neck that bore a strong resemblance to a hand. A few of the cuts were still sluggishly bleeding, but most of them looked to have stopped.

Locus didn't appear to be bothered by any of it. If he even noticed. It was hard to tell. He was studying Felix intently, the lust from mere moments ago replaced by something that couldn't seem to decide if it was curiosity or uncertainty or some awkward amalgamation of the two. Felix stared back at him, slowly catching his breath as nothing continued to happen. The muscles across his forehead were beginning to contract into a furrow when Locus finally opened his mouth, and with a flash of intuition, Felix knew exactly what was going to come out.

"There _is_ such a thing as a stupid question," he said severely, cutting him off. "And I can see you getting ready to ask it."

The caustic remark worked. Locus shut his mouth. Felix watched his gaze leave his face and roam searchingly down over his body. Having no preference of his own outside of wanting to be able to see it and interested to see what Locus would do with the same carte blanche he'd offered earlier, Felix told his libido to take a hike for a few minutes and relaxed as best he could on the cool floor. It was tempting to entertain himself while he waited. Locus was close enough to touch and Felix had learned early on in their partnership that he could occupy himself for a long time with nothing but his fingers and Locus' muscles. Doing that would be a distraction, however; since he was _trying_ not to be completely selfish, he reluctantly forced himself to keep his hands at his sides.

About half a minute later, before his patience could be truly tested, Locus shifted backward onto Felix's thighs and tugged the left side of his sweatpants down away from his hip. It was not, he knew, in an effort to restart the possibility of sex, though it took a few seconds for his dick to get the message and settle down. To help it along, he busied himself locating a blade for Locus to use. They'd rolled far enough away from his that it would take too much ungraceful flopping around to reach it, but one of the combat knives was within easy arm's reach.

"Here," he said, offering it handle first. At Locus' questioning look, he twitched his shoulders in an approximation of a careless shrug. "I want to feel it."

Locus took it without further discussion, but he didn't get started the way Felix was expecting. He just stared down at his hip like it contained the answers to all the mysteries of the universe, holding the knife so loosely that it almost seemed like he'd forgotten it was there. Felix watched him for a few seconds, impatiently waiting for him to get on with it, before he realized that there was more going on in there than simple uncertainty about what he wanted to carve into his skin. Judging from the intensity of that stare, Locus was Making A Decision about something.

_Oh,_ now _what's the problem?_ Felix stewed in the privacy of his mind, torn between saying something to hurry him along and keeping his mouth shut so he could work it out on his own. _If he's changing his mind about this, I swear, I'm going to_ _—_

It took a few seconds for the sting to register, but as soon as it did, Felix snapped out of his irritable thoughts. Locus was _finally_ making a cut. A straight, relatively boring cut. It started on his abdomen, midway between his hip and his navel, and slanted down toward the outer part of his thigh. He couldn't be sure without sitting up to look at it, but making an estimate from the way it felt, he wagered that it was only a few centimeters long. None of which gave him any clues as to what the end result was going to be.

Certainly _not_ any permutation of Locus' name. That wasn't his style. Even if it had been, he was too paranoid to leave hints of his real name anywhere that might be seen by unwelcome eyes. And he didn't have the sense of humor for anything frivolous or stupid. Unless he was going for something utterly forgettable like a generic knife wound, it probably wasn't going to actually _be_ anything. Just a collection of random scars, remarkable only because Locus had deliberately put them there.

But then Locus started the second cut—above his hip and down along the line of his lower abdominal muscle—and he knew.

Compared to the complicated thing Felix had etched into his shoulder, this was ridiculously, laughably simple. Obviously deliberate—anyone who saw it would know that someone had put it there on purpose—but hardly the product of artistic flair or imagination. Certainly nothing that anyone else would assume held any sort of deep meaning. And that was the joke, wasn't it? Because it meant _everything._

Hardly daring to breathe, Felix searched Locus' face, _knowing_ what he saying but needing to see it there to really believe it. As he completed the cut and his hand came to a stop, Locus looked up and met his eyes. And there it was, as easy to read as if he'd spelled it out with pen and paper.

Acknowledgement. Ownership. Acceptance.

To Felix, the scar on Locus' face was largely unimportant. Sure, it made him easily recognizable, which was a mess when a mission required a certain level of anonymity, but it was hardly the end of the world. And as far as appearances went, it was pretty badass, a testament to the fact that he'd survived something that might have killed a lesser man, and that just made him hotter than he already was. It meant something else, too, but Felix refused to acknowledge that other, darker, unpleasant thing and always shunted those thoughts away before they could take hold and make him feel things he didn't want to feel. 

But Locus had taken it personally. He never talked about it. If anyone tried to talk about it with him, he shut the conversation down faster than a bullet through the eye. He covered it up. He ignored it. And internalized the fuck out of it. To Locus, that scar was a failure. It was proof that he hadn't been good enough to avoid it. A reminder of his weakness and mortality. A badge of shame.

Every attempt to change his stubborn fucking mind had met with resistance and failure. He refused to open his eyes to the truth. He refused to place the blame where it belonged. For more than a decade, he'd carried that scar like a heavy, unwieldy burden he couldn't put down.

By carving it into Felix's skin, he wasn't just acknowledging it as an indelible part of his life. He was accepting it, owning it, finally making it his after all those fraught years. He was reclaiming himself as surely as he was publicly staking a claim on his partner. That alone would have been enough to satisfy Felix and put closure on a part of their lives neither of them enjoyed remembering. Yet when he looked into Locus' eyes, he saw something else in there too. Something so alien and unexpected that it twisted him up inside and left him struggling to figure out how to deal with it.

And he didn't want to do that. Not then, when it seemed like they might actually be on the road to getting back to normal and stupid slippery things like _feelings_ would just ruin everything. Not ever, because accepting Locus' forgiveness came with an emotional price he wasn't equipped to pay. It was already throwing him off-balance now and he didn't like it. He needed a way out of it. _Now._

Shoving everything he couldn't stomach out of his mind, Felix gave him a sly, crooked smile. "Hey, so, since you're already down there..."

Felix was under no illusions that Locus was clueless about what he was doing, but it still surprised him when Locus touched the tip of the knife to his side and slowly scored a long, shallow cut up along his ribs. "Who said I'm done?"

Inhaling sharply, Felix lifted his head off the floor to get a better look at him. A small smirk tugged at the corners of Locus' mouth, nearly distracting him from the slight burn that spread over his chest as a second, equally shallow cut graced the area right below his nipple. They were too light to leave a permanent mark, their only purpose to provide sensation, which meant that Locus was playing. That was a rarity all on its own and as much as Felix wanted to lay back and let him go, see how far he decided to take it, his timing was absolutely terrible.

Too much had happened in too short a time. The mixture of surprise, arousal, excitement, adrenaline, and chaotic, conflicting emotions was too volatile for him to sustain any amount of patience. It needed an outlet before it exploded, and the longer Locus toyed with him, as erotic as it was fascinating, the quicker that was going to happen.

As he trailed the point of the knife up the center of his chest, Felix caught his wrist and said lightly, albeit a tad regretfully, "Don't get me wrong, the foreplay's great." He gripped him harder, squeezing in warning. "But if there isn't sex soon..."

Locus breathed out a huff that was almost a laugh. The amusement was in his eyes, though, clear as fucking day. "Impatient." That actually sounded _fond._ Felix narrowed his eyes. "Stay there."

Easily breaking his grip, Locus rose to his feet and walked away. Not entirely sure what was going on, Felix shoved himself up onto his elbows and watched him crouch down beside the duffel bag again. He rifled through it for a moment, before withdrawing a very familiar looking bottle.

Felix's eyebrows shot up in disbelief. "You brought _lube_ to a knife figh—"

It hit him then, with all the blinding abruptness of an exploding fusion coil, that it wasn't a knife fight at all. It had never been a knife fight. Locus—fucking unimaginative, utilitarian, boring _I don't need human emotions_ Locus—had planned a goddamn seduction. The perfect seduction, if he was being completely honest about what he thought of the whole morning. And Felix had never actually been seduced by anyone before. 

He stared at him, dumbfounded, as Locus made his way back over. He was sweaty, bloody, disheveled, and completely nonchalant about it, like he did this kind of shit all the time. All he needed to do to complete the picture of blasé innocence was whistle some stupidly cheery tune and start casually flipping the bottle in his hand. Felix half expected him to do it—after the way the morning had gone, he didn't think he would be surprised by anything anymore—but all he did was stop when he reached him and start to speak.

Felix didn't give him a chance to get the first full word out. He was on his feet in an instant, ignoring the twinge in his hip as the skin around the wound contracted and stretched, and occupying Locus' personal space faster than his brain evidently registered the intrusion. Because he felt Locus' lips still in the middle of shaping a word—it might have been _what_ or _you_ or quite possibly something else altogether—as he kissed him. It was rough and sloppy; he was pretty sure he'd bitten him by accident from the brief tangy burst of blood that filtered into the kiss out of nowhere, but Locus didn't seem to mind. Just like he didn't mind when Felix got his fingers around a handful of his hair and gave it a hard, imperious pull.

_On the floor right the fuck now_ , that gesture meant, and obviously Locus understood it well enough. As the low, rumbling growl of his pleasure vibrated its way into the kiss, Felix felt his hands under his ass, hauling his legs up a second before gravity took a momentary hiatus from reality. It reasserted itself a moment later, with Locus on the floor and Felix on top of him, pressing him down onto it. They kissed until his lungs burned and his lips ached. Until Locus dug bruises into his hips with his fingertips and scratched long, hot welts into his back. Until they had to stop or pass out from lack of oxygen.

Felix was panting when they finally parted, though the vise-like grip on the back of his neck kept him from going too far, and Locus wasn't any better off. He could feel the harsh rise and fall of his chest as he sucked in breath after breath, too fast to really do much good. Flexing his fingers against Locus' scalp, scratching just hard enough to throw off the rhythm of his breathing, Felix ducked his head and, between one gasp and the next, bit him hard on the neck.

Locus made a strangled hissing sound and his hips jerked, pressing his rock-hard cock into Felix's. The unexpected friction made him bite harder, prompting Locus to grab him by the hair and yank his head back. Their eyes met across the centimeters that separated them. Locus' were so dilated that the grey-green irises were difficult to see.

"I want you to fuck me," Locus said in a voice so rough that Felix was pretty sure he felt it through his dick more than he heard it. "Can you do that?"

It must have been stupid fucking question day. There was really no other explanation for Locus asking something to which he damn well knew the answer. Felix tossed his head back, for emphasis as much as for the burn that lit up his scalp as the motion was halted by the grip on his hair. "Gotta let go first."

Locus growled something that sounded a lot like _no_ , but it made no sense in context and even less when it was accompanied by the release of his hair. Deciding not to waste time trying to figure it out—there was no contest between plumbing the meaning of Locus' lust-drunk comments and fucking him—Felix immediately sat up and scrambled back to get his pants off. He must have been eager for it, too, because he actually helped out instead of being a useless, stubborn bastard about it; lifting his hips to make it easier to pull the fabric down over his thighs and kicking it the rest of the way off while Felix took care of stripping himself. 

Tossing the bottle to him, Locus spread his legs wide enough to make room between them. "Hurry up."

Felix caught it as he knelt down in the space provided, laughing under his breath. "I thought _I_ was the impatient one."

"It's been years."

_And whose fault is that?_ Never one to accept the blame for something that wasn't his fault, Felix _really_ wanted to fight the implication that he was in any way responsible for the long, seemingly endless sexual drought that had done its level best to kill them. It was all Locus. Every miserable second of it. But throwing the accusation at him might very well start an argument that could further prolong their suffering. For once, it was better just to let the mistakes of the past stay there and focus on getting away from them.

"So, what? You want me to make up for it?" Feigning confusion, Felix ran his palm leisurely along the top of Locus' thigh, touching him without coming anywhere near his cock. "Really take my time?" It was the emptiest threat in the galaxy. Even if he had wanted to draw it out for an hour or two, really drive Locus insane before he let him come, he wouldn't have been able to do it. He didn't have that much restraint. "That's what you're saying?"

Locus must have known that he was teasing, but evidently he wasn't in the mood to humor it even for a few seconds. " _Isaac_." Likely thinking one frustrated snarl wasn't enough to get the message delivered, he tipped his bent knee to the side and booted Felix in the ass with his heel.

It was _so_ gratifying to witness Locus' desperation that for an instant, the rush of satisfaction was too overwhelming to move. _Finally_ , Felix thought, triumph and relief a strangely heady combination. _Finally_. The moment passed almost as quickly as it gripped him, however, and once it did, he opened the bottle and poured a liberal amount of the liquid into his hand.

"Lift up a little," he told Locus, nudging his inner thigh with his elbow as he deposited the bottle onto the floor and slicked up his fingers.

Without any dry rejoinders about Felix's failure to be sexy about it, Locus planted his foot and arched his hips away from the floor. Felix rubbed his fingers together one last time, double-checking that they were slippery enough, then eased his forefinger into him. He _could_ have done it with more creativity and finesse than that, he certainly had before when they'd done this, but he was pretty sure that if he tried to entertain Locus with a blowjob while he worked him open, he'd get him off by accident and ruin the whole thing. Plus, Locus didn't look like he would've appreciated Felix taking any longer about it than absolutely necessary.

In fact, he barely got going before he felt Locus' body contract around his finger and his foot prod at his ass again. "I'm not going to break," Locus growled, looking like he was tempted to turn that _gentle encouragement_ into a full-blown kick.

"No," Felix agreed, resisting the temptation to add a second finger too soon out of spite. "But unless you've been doing this with someone else, you're going to have to wait a fucking minute."

Locus apparently understood that he was making a point, not an accusation, because he subsided back onto the floor without trying to turn it into something that, for once, it wasn't. "Fine."

It sounded just sulky enough to be amusing, so after one more pointed rock of his forefinger, Felix added a second when he pushed into him again. Locus inhaled harder than normal, but when Felix paused, he bore down on his fingers to get him moving. Half a minute later, he gave him another. Locus wasn't showing any signs of discomfort and the speed of his breathing was gradually increasing. Tension visibly tightened his abdomen as he forced himself to remain still and let Felix set the pace. Moisture was beading at the tip of his cock where it lay against his stomach, no doubt aching to be touched.

Unable to help himself, Felix ran the tip of his unoccupied finger over the head of it. He smiled openly when the contact made Locus twitch, and with the heated weight of his eyes on him, he collected that drop of pre-come on his fingertip and brought it to his mouth. Locus watched him lick it off without appearing to breathe. And that was what broke him.

" _Now_ , Isaac," he demanded, bucking his hips for emphasis. "I'm ready."

_I bet you are_. Obligingly, he pulled his fingers out of him. Locus gave an involuntary hiss at the loss of them, but when Felix flattened his hand on top of his hip and pushed down, he relaxed without further complaint. "I know. Just..." Talking and slicking up his own dick at the same time proved to be too much trouble. Felix shut his mouth, let his eyes half-close at the sensation, and enjoyed it for the few seconds he gave himself to get it done.

No longer making a token effort to appear patient, Locus cleared his throat and spread his legs further apart. "Today."

Huffing, Felix took hold of his hip in one hand, his dick in the other, and lined up. "If not getting fucked makes you this much of a bossy asshole, we're going to have to do it more often." It wasn't a great threat, since neither of them would mind that and they both knew it, but it was the best he could do when he was concentrating on pushing into him without causing too much discomfort.

Locus didn't respond, clearly too preoccupied with trying to breathe and relax and not tighten up at the same time to dignify the comment with acknowledgement. It strained his self-control almost to the snapping point to stop, but Felix managed to do it with only the head of his cock inside him.

"Are—" Locus cut off the question with a grunt so harsh that it needed no clarification. "Okay, okay."

Taking hold of his hips with both hands now, Felix pushed forward, trying and failing to keep his breathing slow and steady. He could feel his muscles starting to tremble at the strain of forcing himself not to move too fast, but Locus was too fucking tight. He couldn't go any faster without hurting him. Or possibly having an excruciatingly mortifying incident. And that _could not_ under any circumstances happen.

By the time he was fully sheathed inside him, Felix was sweating, his arms were shaking, and he was pretty sure that the tips of his fingers were numb from how hard he was gripping Locus' hips. But Locus hadn't complained about it yet. A few tries were required to get the necessary amount of air into his lungs to make words happen; as he struggled to collect it, Felix shook his hair out of his eyes and realized that Locus was watching him with an imperious sort of questioning impatience.

"Fuck, you're tight," was the best, half-panting, half-wheezing explanation he could offer for why he was taking so long.

"Don't you dare come too soon," Locus shot back immediately, sounding disgustingly less wrecked than Felix knew he did.

"Seriously?" He tried for insulted outrage, but it fell a little short of the proper tone as _no promises_ shot through his mind. "Christ." Now that he had some momentum, the words came out a little faster. "I'm almost forty. This isn't my first—"

Locus rocked his hips without warning, making Felix nearly bite his tongue at the sudden flood of pleasure that raced up his cock. "Quit bitching and move."

Unable to scrabble together enough oxygen to outright laugh, he had to settle for a snort. "Oh my god. Shut up." Under his breath, Felix added, feigning irritation, "Backseat fucker."

A bark of laughter escaped Locus' mouth. At the same time, his ass tightened reflexively around Felix's cock, stealing any enjoyment he might have gotten out of hearing that sound as he fought valiantly against doing exactly what he'd just been warned not to fucking do. Dicey as the battle was, after a few alarming seconds, he emerged victorious and was immediately blindsided by what was happening.

He was cock-deep in Locus' tight ass in the middle of a cleared out cargo bay. They were laughing at each other. Locus was _smiling_ up at him. He was fairly certain that his face was doing something similar, though thanks to his effort not to embarrass himself, it was probably more of a grimace than anything else. They were having fun together, light and carefree and without the weight of the baggage that had been dragging them down for decades. Like death and disappointment and one betrayal after another hadn't left a mark on them.

It was as overwhelming as every other revelation he'd had that morning, too big and too full of things he didn't know how to deal with that it felt like he was going to fall off the edge of familiarity and drown in it. Maybe Locus realized it at the same time he did. Maybe he saw a flicker of it in his eyes. Whatever it was, Felix saw the corners of his mouth start to tighten and not knowing what was on the other side of it or whether he could handle it, he jerked his hips back and thrust forward, shattering whatever it was that was threatening to happen.

Locus sucked in a breath, the sound almost a full-throated gasp, and Felix felt his fingers dig into his back. Those pricks of pain spurred him on as surely as the visceral need to outrun his unwanted emotions did. He drove into Locus like his life depended on wringing an orgasm out of them both and Locus met him thrust for thrust, his hold on him as punishing as the rhythm Felix unconsciously set. Save for the rapid rasp of their breathing, neither made a sound, fucking too fast and frantic for words or moans of pleasure.

Felix got a hand between them, fumbling only slightly, and wrapped it around Locus' cock. The added friction caused Locus' hips to jerk erratically and lose the rhythm, and that jarring change almost sent Felix over the edge. Snarling in wordless frustration at his thwarted orgasm, he began moving again, aligning each forward thrust of his hips with the downward stroke of his fist. Locus caught on fast, started moving with him instead of against him, and then went faster, like an impromptu race to see who would last longer.

By a mere second, the winner was Felix. The abrupt, convulsive tightening of Locus' body as he came without any warning whatsoever drug Felix along with him. He pushed through it, rocking quickly back and forth in Locus' ass on autopilot as the too-sharp pleasure whited out his mind and silenced everything. It seemed like he hung there forever, suspended in some hypersensitive state that was oddly beyond his capacity for feeling, before existence started to leak back in.

Locus' harsh, panting breaths near his ear, loud and hot and almost tickling the hair that was disturbed each time one passed over skin. The too-fast rise and fall of his chest, slick with sweat and pressed against Felix's, and the faint burn as the salt irritated the cuts he'd forgotten all about. Locus' hands pressed to his back, fingers lax from the aftermath of his orgasm but actively remaining where they were. The cock slowly softening in his hand, now wet and slippery with come. Darkness that became the rich brown of Locus' skin and the dull silver of the flooring beyond it as Felix lifted his forehead up off of his uninjured shoulder.

His heart was still thundering behind his ribs and no matter how quickly he gulped in air, he couldn't seem to catch his breath and ease the constriction in his chest. But the haziness dulling his mind kept him from caring about that faint discomfort the same way it kept him from thinking about the boneless way he laid his head back down, tucked in between Locus' shoulder and his neck. He didn’t move. Underneath him, neither did Locus.

At some indistinct point, after his spine started to complain about the way it was being contorted and he was practically falling out of him anyway, Felix shifted his hips and withdrew completely. A sigh broke up the cadence of Locus' breathing, but he neither said anything nor shoved at him when Felix settled more comfortably on top of him. It was a rare moment of contentment—or something masquerading convincingly enough as it that Felix was suspending his disbelief and accepting it—that wasn't going to last. No matter how still or silent he was, he couldn't stave off discomfort, muscle cramps, an idiotic emergency, time, or whatever would eventually rouse them both out of it and force them back into their combative lives. All he could do was take control of it.

"Not that I'm complaining," Felix started curiously, knowing that he ought to leave it alone and hoping that by speaking half into Locus' clavicle, whatever he might take offense to about the question would be too muffled to be intelligible. "But what brought this on?"

Locus didn't freeze like he'd been caught doing something stupid or tense like he was about to deposit Felix onto the floor in order to get up and away from him. His heartbeat didn't kick up a notch the way it sometimes did when he was scrambling to find an explanation he didn't want to give. Even his breathing stayed the same. Like he either didn't realize the ramifications of the question or was so at peace with them that he didn't care.

Felix frowned, squinting at what little he could see of Locus' face without raising his head. It wasn't much. Just his smooth-shaven jaw and the relaxed corner of his lips.

Finally, after what was an eternity for him and probably just a few seconds for the rest of the universe, Locus replied simply, "We lost enough time."

That was _not_ what Felix was expecting. He was quiet as he tried to process it, but no matter which angle he examined it from, the conclusion he kept reaching was that Locus wasn't _getting_ it. And that was going to cause problems sooner than later. There was no going back now. He had accepted what Locus had offered him and he wasn't going to give it back. It was irreversible.

The Felix who had sauntered into the shabby as fuck headquarters of the New Republic to con them into wiping themselves out wouldn't have bothered trying to clue Locus in. He would have let him find out the hard way, knowing full well that it would take a considerable amount of shouting, fighting, and bloodshed before the idiot got the message. But that Felix had died twice, and although he hadn't experienced the first death, he clearly remembered the second. He'd seen the destination at the end of the road he'd been flying down and he wanted no parts of it.

Which left _this_ Felix. The one that didn't quite fit the way that it should. The one that didn't care about any of the useless bullshit Locus now wanted to champion but was trying to make allowances for it anyway. The one that unhappily ventured into the treacherous waters of emotional communication, knowing that the current could drown them both if they weren't careful but wary of returning to the place where Locus would kill him for someone like the sims. The one that could have shrugged the whole thing off but didn't.

As much as he didn't want to face him when he said it, Felix lifted his head just far enough to look him in the eyes. "You know that you're stuck now, right, Sam?" It was tempting to cover it with mockery or sarcasm; in the spirit of maintaining the peace, he kept it serious. "There's no walking away. I won't let you."

"You're assuming anything has changed," Locus replied quietly, meeting his eyes without reservation.

_Am I going to need to spell it out? Are you really that fucking dense?_ He didn't think that he was, but it was possible that he'd been wrong about that. "It has."

Locus shook his head. "No, it hasn't. You just can't ignore it now."

Contesting it was automatic. A reflex honed through a veritable lifetime spent maneuvering around all of the excuses and opportunities that Locus had to leave him. Things _had_ changed between them. If Locus was serious about it, if he meant what he was implying through the declaration he'd just made with words and blades, that was a massive paradigm shift in their lives. It meant he _wouldn't_ leave. That nothing was going to come between them because he hadn’t left any space for interlopers to occupy. That he wanted Felix. That he _chose_ him and would continue to choose him over everybody else.

Like he'd chosen him in the aftermath of the war. Like he'd chosen him, drunk or sober, over every random man and woman who'd gotten a look at him and thrown themselves at him. Like he'd chosen him every time he and Siris had pulled him in different directions. Like he'd chosen him over his picture perfect happily ever after with Wash in the future. Like he'd chosen him over profits and the satisfaction of completing the Chorus mission when he'd asked him to abandon it and leave. Like he'd chosen him when his best friend returned from the dead.

Like he'd been choosing him since that dismal, rainy day on that godforsaken, ultimately doomed colony when they'd met. 

" _Fuck_." 

He wasn't aware that he'd whispered it until after it left his mouth, but once it was out there, hissing into the air between them, there was no pretending that he hadn't just crashed face first into the realization that the son of a bitch was right. Nothing really _had_ changed. All those years of paranoia and nauseating anxiety had been pointless. Locus had always been there. The one reliable, immovable constant in his chaotic life. 

And he'd never fucking noticed. 

When Felix followed that interjection with silence, Locus lifted his eyebrows in the most transparent bid to prompt him to admit the unthinkable that he'd ever seen. _You're right_ , he could theoretically say. _I've been a blind fucking idiot. We've wasted way too much time._ And it would certainly be true. He had been a blind fucking idiot. But he wasn't about to admit it. Fuck that. 

"Nope," he replied archly, well aware that acknowledgement of his refusal was the same as conceding the point. "Keep dreaming, asshole." 

A smile flickered at the corner of Locus' mouth. "The floor's too uncomfortable to sleep on." 

Acknowledged, accepted, and put away where hopefully they wouldn't ever have to discuss it again. Felix recognized that easily. Setting his chin on the center of Locus' chest, he leaned forward to really make it dig in. "Is that a hint that you want to get up?" 

Locus tapped his fingertips along his spine. "We could use a shower." He didn't add that the floor needed cleaned, but Felix knew him too well to assume that he wasn't thinking about it.

Felix sighed, a heavy, thoroughly aggrieved heave of his shoulders. "I'm assuming you mean the boring kind."

"Unbelievable," Locus muttered, in what had to be the most unconvincing attempt at disgust Felix had ever heard.

"Totally believable," he tossed back at him. Then, with a softer, genuine sigh, Felix pushed himself up off of Locus and onto his feet. He held out his hand. "Shower first, clean-up after. I'll even help."

Taking his hand, Locus let him pull him up. "Deal."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said this last part would be the end, but it turns out I can't wrap it up that quickly after all. 
> 
> I can be found on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/ereliswrites) & [Tumblr](http://griffonfarm.tumblr.com). Thanks for reading!


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